What do Hunter's Point toxic waste, a politically-motivated murder, and a legendary Bay Area sex worker activist have in common? They are just three subjects of the one dozen narrative feature film projects selected as finalists for the first joint social justice film-making grant from the San Francisco Film Society and The Kenneth Rainin Foundation.

This initial $35,000 grant is the first in a series of semi-annual grants running from 2009-2013. These monies will finance the creation of a narrative feature film with a social justice theme. Said narrative feature must be made in the San Francisco Bay Area. Grant recipients will also have access to the benefits of the Film Society's extensive filmmaker services programs.

Among the nominated projects are:

Mark Decena: Speak To Me (screenwriting/script development) -- A decades-old legacy of toxic waste abandoned in Hunter's Point personally hits an ex-Navy grunt when he encounters his daughter's class of speech therapy students.

Mabel Valdiviezo: Soledad's Awakening (preproduction) -- A San Francisco photographer returns to her Chilean birthplace to seek the truth about her father's politically motivated disappearance and possible murder.

Amanda Micheli: Tomboy (screenwriting/script development) -- A little girl who dreams of playing football like her ex-NFL linebacker father faces an identity crisis when she hits womanhood.

Caveh Zahedi: Coyote (screenwriting/script development) -- Biopic about legendary sex-worker rights activist Margo St. James also shows how sex-positive feminism and the sexual revolution transformed San Francisco into a bastion of socio-political progressivism.

Jeff Zimbalist: The Scribe Of Uraba (preproduction) -- A Colombian teenager dealing with the murder of her union leader father at a Coca Cola bottling plant provides the personal focus for this semi-fictionalized chronicle of the rise of Latin America's Peace Community Movement.

The other finalists are Jeffrey Brown (In The Life), Tom Brown (Pushing Dead), Catherine Craig (Suspended Belief), Nanci Gaglio (Venus Rising), Richard Levien (La Migra), Jennie Livingston (Who's The Top?), and Natalija Vekic (Solace). Honorable mentions are Dina Ciraulo (Opal), Eric Escobar (An Army Of One), Jed Riffe (Convention), and Anurag Wadehra (Left At Exit).

The winner of the initial SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant will be announced on May 6, 2009 at the S.F. Film Society's Golden Gate Awards ceremony.

For further information about the SFFS/KRF grant finalists, go here: http://www.sffs.org/filmmaker-services/grants-and-prizes/sffskrf-filmmaking-grants.aspx

Letters of inquiry for the Fall 2009 SFFS/KRF grant must be sent between July 20, 2009 and August 20, 2009. Further information can be found at http://www.sffs.org/filmmaker_services/rainin-filmmaking-grants.