The Human Family has been approved for a $15,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the 2022 North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival. It is the first NEA grant for The Human Family. The project is among 1,125 projects across America totaling more than $26.6 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2022 funding.
The North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival (NDHRFF) showcases worldwide independent narrative, documentary, and short films featuring social justice, civil rights, or human rights topics. Film screenings are paired with community conversations, artists’ workshops, and presentations that bring hosted filmmakers and local community leaders actively engaged in social change to discuss their work with audiences. The festival is a free seventeen-day event and is North Dakota’s only statewide film festival.
NDHRFF centers conversations around and amplifies the voices of those who have been systemically underrepresented so that residents of North Dakota gain a deeper understanding of the historical underpinnings of urgent contemporary human rights, civil rights, and social justice issues.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, including The Human Family, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, Ph.D. “The arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”
“We’re proud that The Human Family and our annual North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival have been selected by the NEA for support. Our mission is to celebrate and amplify the courageous voices of filmmakers and artists bringing awareness to human rights, civil rights, or social justice issues. We believe that engagement with difficult conversations through film and art cultivates learning and compassion, amplifies the voice of underrepresented artists, and promotes diversity. This festival, in particular, works to encourage community change through empathy, understanding, and perspective-shifting. And we couldn’t do this without the support of the NEA and all of our funders and sponsors,” said The Human Family Executive Director Sean Coffman.
The 6th annual North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival opens on November 2 at the historic Fargo Theatre. The festival and artist’s workshops will be hosted in Fargo from November 2-5, 2022. Encore screenings and community discussions will take place in Bismarck, Grand Forks, Jamestown, and Minot through November. All screenings, artist’s workshops, and community discussions are free and open to the public.
For more information on other projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. For more information about the North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival, visit www.ndhrff.org.
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