NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music & Theatre

The NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theatre is a groundbreaking initiative by the City of New York Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) to address the underrepresentation of women and women-identifying artists in film, television, theatre, and music.

MOME has announced the selection of 96 projects, led by women creatives, that will receive finishing grants in the fourth round of the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre. The $2 million awarded in this round brings the grand total of funding to $7.5 million, allocated to a total of 342 recipients.

MOME awarded grants to projects in the following categories:

• 18 General Music – each received up to $20,000
• 18 Theatre Productions – each received up to $50,000
• 14 Classical/Jazz/Experimental Music – each received up to $20,000
• 14 Fiction Short – each received up to $25,000
• 9 Documentary Features – each received up to $50,000
• 7 Documentary Shorts – each received up to $25,000
• 5 Documentary Webisodes/Webseries – each received up to $20,000
• 7 Fiction Webisode/Webseries – each received up to $20,000
• 4 Fiction Features – each received up to $50,000

In addition to being made by, for, or about all who identify as women, projects are eligible if they feature a strong woman's perspective; and/or include a woman director; and/or include a meaningful woman producer credit; and/or include a meaningful woman writing credit; and/or include a woman protagonist(s).

Following are announcements of the first through fourth rounds of NYC Women's Fund recipients:

• First round announced in 2019
• Second round announced in 2020
• Third round announced in 2022
• Fourth round announced in 2023

Below is a complete list of projects selected for funding in the fourth round of the NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theatre in 2023.

Clementina Ojie and Orire Nwani (director) - Title: Love in Seclusion
About: During the pandemic, a young Lagos wife is desperate to take advantage of quarantine and conceive her first child. Unbeknownst to her, her husband has no intentions of having children.

Meryl Branch-McTiernan of Ex Files Productions - Title: Katie's Mom
About: A recent divorcée's beloved holiday celebration with her adult children is derailed when she falls for her daughter's charming new boyfriend.

Rachel Wolther - Title: The French Italian
About: A comedy about a New York couple who become obsessed with their loud downstairs neighbors. When they find out one is an actress, they contrive a fake play in order to get revenge.

Sarah G. Waldron - Title: Flying Lessons
About: Starring the autistic actress who inspired the story, "Flying Lessons" is a narrative/documentary hybrid following two adopted sisters forced together by their mother’s sudden death.

Alicia Ramirez and Izzy Stanish - Title: Sam & The Universe
About: Sam hates their birthday. They know they will be visited on the same day every year, but it never gets any easier and this will be the 30th time.

Cara Griffin - Title: MY SAVIOR
About: While grappling with growing apart from her childhood best friend, an introverted teenage girl is forced to confront her obsession with a male pop star.

Catya Plate - Title: Las Nogas
About: In 2523, Earth is a wasteland destroyed by humans. Doctor Alma, a brilliant bird must cure the sick lovable Homeys - the only creatures who can save the world by bringing back the rain.

Donna Di Novelli - Title: WHEN LAST SEEN
About: Reimagines the Greek myth of the kidnapped Persephone to bear witness to the multitudes who go missing every year.

Ar Ducao - Title: The Great Tit is a Bird
About: To escape the complicated grief of a family death, a high school girl takes an international job recruiting slum teenagers for a tropical research study.

Francesca Pazniokas - Title: Dummy!
About: An aspiring singer struggles to break free from her controlling mother -- a ventriloquist dummy who has dreams of stardom, too.

Hivewild & Katherine Maxwell - Title: a sigh of origin
About: A dance film situated within an aging psyche, invoking multi-dimensional experiences of identity, perspective, and memory throughout a lifetime.

KK Apple - Title: The Launch
About: When a ruthless tech ubernerd is faced with pushback right before a big launch, he must find a way to hype up the team — and himself — before going onstage.

Kathy Mitrani - Title: Sombras Nada Más (Nothing But Shadows)
About: Inspired by current events and personal experiences, Sombras Nada Más explores the culture of loss and death in a superstitious neighborhood in Miami, Florida.

Raina Yang - Title: Sink
About: On a hiking trip, a Chinese girl grapples with questions of identity as she finds herself at a crossroads between her Chinese classmate and her fear of being perceived as an outsider.

Maaa Film - Title: There Were Trees
About: After receiving the news of her lover’s death, an elderly actress goes on a journey to say goodbye to the woman she was forced to leave when she was young.

Sally Tran - Title: Don't
About: An action fantasy film following a ragtag group of fems in the streets of Chinatown who band together to fight off a rival gang and protect their community.

Sophia Feuer - Title: Flood Line
About: Due to mysterious circumstances, two sisters are left with an estranged relative in a rural town that seems out of place, out of time, and full of unspoken secrets.

Stephanie Bencin - Title: Greetings
About: Office newbie, Trish, finds popularity when her coworkers realize that whatever she writes in their birthday cards comes true...until they forget her birthday.

Courtney Peck & Nino Tandilashvili - Title: Sweeps
About: Two best friends brave the cutthroat entertainment industry through the confines of a top talent agency’s mailroom.

Jasia Ka - Title: Girls Aren't Funny
About: A drama comedy series that tells the stories of up-and-coming womxn comedians in the New York City Stand Up scene, inspired by their real life experiences.

JT Tsou and Katie North - Title: Events at Hemlock Manor
About: When "keeping the haunted house open all year round" fails as a business model, the employees of Hemlock Manor delicately avoid bankruptcy by hosting horror-themed events.

K. "Kween Kash" Sarvis - Title: Homegirl TV Show
About: An episodic, scripted, comedy series that follows a group of first generation Caribbean-American friends from New York navigating life, love, family and the drama of it all.

Katherine Allen - Title: L'alphabête Noire
About: The naughty little alphabet hiding under your bed.

Marine Assaiante - Title: MOM TO BE
About: 30 seconds funny vignettes about pregnancy.

Sofiya Cheyenne and Julie Wyman - Title: How We Look
About: What happens when Little People control our own representation? This short film series confronts a legacy of being seen as spectacle and specimen, reimagining dwarf culture on our terms.

Alaina Ferris & Karinne Keithley Syers, Amanda+James, The Lydian Gale Parr - Title: The Lydian Gale Parr
About: A surreal and poetic chamber oratorio, The Lydian Gale Parr follows the story of a child emissary in her journey to deliver a letter to the general laying seige to her city.

Atlantic Theater Company - Title: Infinite Life
About: A group of strangers gather at a California health clinic. A new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker which examines persistent pain and desire.

Cayenne Douglass - Title: Maiden Voyage
About: As the first women led submarine patrol embarks, the need to be seen as infallible comes into conflict with the desire to be seen as authentically human.

Jennifer Miller/Circus Amok - Title: Circus Amok Parks Tour
About: Bringing a new (as yet untitled) show to 12 parks and green spaces across New York City.

The Classical Theatre of Harlem: Presenting Organization Playwright of Malvolio: Betty Shamieh - Title: Malvolio at Uptown Shakespeare in the Park
About: Malvolio, an original sequel to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, by Betty Shamieh.

Dena Igusti - Title: First Sight: A Queer Indonesian Love Story
About: A chance encounter between singer Sari and Indonesian zine editor and journalist Lisa in 1997 Jakarta leads to a love that spans across two generations and countries.

Epic Theatre Ensemble - Title: ENEMIES
About: Mirroring the water crisis in Flint, this adaptation of Ibsen's Enemy of the People (written by six young women) centers two sisters battling over the health of their community.

HERE - Title: Priestess of Twerk
About: A large-scale devised theatre project that centers Black women and femmes, becoming a larger call to find healing among the repressions in our own underworlds.

Jeesun Choi - Title: To the Ends of the Earth / 땅끝까지
About: A bilingual play about the Korean diaspora and creating one's own sense of belonging in an ever-changing world as told by over 100 women+ characters.

Kendra Jain and Sarah Shin - Title: The Sitayana (or "How to Make An Exit")
About: A one-woman retelling of the Hindu epic, The Ramayana, from Sita’s point of view, paired with post-show community receptions and events.

Maria Camia - Title: The Healing Shipment
About: A spiritual / sci-fi puppet musical about the maternal lineage, extra-terrestrials, potato spaceships, a missing sun, and finding your light.

Marina Zurita - Title: Riven
About: A theater piece based on interviews with Brazilian waste pickers (known as catadores/catadoras) and set to investigate the intersections between motherhood and accumulation of waste.

Nadira Simone - Title: PLAY HERE [ ______ ]
About: A full length collection of short plays, painting portraits from the mundane to the absurdity of this world, giving the audience the magic of the imagination.

Nehprii Amenii of Khunum Productions - Title: HUMAN
About: A 60-minute multi-media puppetry-based stage-play for multi-generational audiences that asks What it really means to be HUMAN?

Yvette Martinez, Director One World Arts, Inc/¡Retumba! - Title: Titi Strikes Back - Evelina's Return
About: A dynamic theatrical production for young audiences celebrating the life and accomplishment of the tireless fighter for education and human rights, Evelina Antonetty.

Pat Golden - Title: Hyannis
About: Aftermath of the subprime banking meltdown exposes fault-lines when Cape Codders Aggie and Charles are forced to reconcile, then repair broken trust in a world that rewards its erosion.

Salomé Egas - Title: Más Que Un Pétalo (More than a Petal)
About: An interdisciplinary show using theater, dance, textile arts, original music and stop-motion video to deconstruct the Ecuadorian immigrant experience in the United States.

Yekta Khaghani - Title: You struck me with an ax, over and over, but there is no wound... only a sprout
About: Five expelled female students must make a forced confession on something they've never done to get back to their normal life; their confessions become stories of the revolution.

Alina Simone - Title: Black Snow
About: When citizen journalist Natalia Zubkova uncovers an environmental catastrophe unfolding in her Siberian hometown, she becomes the target of a massive government disinformation campaign.

Chelsi Bullard - Title: Unfiltered
About: In "Little Haiti" Brooklyn a teenager challenges the ‘Angry Black Woman’ trope through charged poetry that ignites a quest for intergenerational healing and reclaiming her childhood.

Greta Schiller/Jezebel Productions - Title: Love Letters
About: Two women lovers in 1977, find the radical courage to defy patriarchal culture and claim a new kind of motherhood. An epic love story across two continents and four decades.

Loulwa Khoury - Title: We Never Left
About: Portraying an emotional duality between Beirut and New York, We Never Left is an impassioned testament to the Lebanese diaspora’s unrequited love for their homeland.

Marisa Fox - Title: My Underground Mother
About: Freedom fighter, femme fatale, double agent--my mother was a hero, "not a victim." When her writing appears in a Holocaust diary, I must reckon with harsh truths she took to her grave.

Sandra Luckow - Title: Vanishing: A Love Story
About: Although mute from bulbar-onset ALS, award-winning novelist, Cai Emmons loudly and eloquently connects us to her life so that she (and we) can embrace her "death with dignity" decision.

Steph Ching and Ellen Martinez (directors) - Title: Slumlord Millionaire
About: In some of the most quickly gentrifying neighborhoods in New York, fearless residents, activists, and nonprofit attorneys fight corrupt landlords for the basic human right to a home.

Tami Kashia Gold - Title: It's Just a Job
About: An ensemble of sex workers tell the story of their work to decriminalize laws that affect them based on racism, homophobia and transphobia.

Titi Yu - Title: Dissidents
About: Three exiled Chinese dissidents are targeted by transnational surveillance, threats, and assaults on American soil because of their pro-democracy activism.

Maya Cozier - Title: San Juan Hill: A NY Story
About: The history of San Juan Hill is reflected upon from the home of Harlem icon, Lana Turner.

Desireena Almoradie & Barbara Malaran - Title: UNTITLED KILAWIN DOCUMENTARY
About: Joyful, raw, revolutionary: in the 1990s, against a racist, lesbophobic backdrop, a group of Filipinxs came together for the first time in NYC to create a safe and loving community.

Imani Nikyah Dennison - Title: They Said The People Can Skate
About: An intimate video portrait of Black roller skate culture in Louisville, KY.

Izabel Acevedo - Title: Marlen and the Peter Pan Syndrome
About: Marlen got stuck when moved to NYC. She took on debts and gave up on her apartment to send money for her kids back in Mexico. One morning she woke up and decided she wanted to be free.

Luna X Moya - Title: Greyfields
About: A seemingly 'abandoned' mall in Ohio was brought back to life by over twenty Black churches that rent the space.

nancy ma - Title: 有一天，你不在 （One Day You are Not Here)
About: A daughter's attempt to connect to her aging, immigrant father.

Vaishali Sinha - Title: PERSIS
About: What do we call a woman who journeys into the unknown? PERSIS traces the story of unheralded Parsi-Indian actor Persis Khambatta, who became an American pop-culture icon.

Dolores Zorreguieta - Title: I am an artist!
About: A webseries of art explorations for kids that provides a space for reflection through storytelling, animation and by observing the work of a wide range of artists.

Frieda Vizel - Title: Discover Hasidic Brooklyn
About: Exploring the hidden Brooklyn Hasidic community.

Jackie Aude - Title: The Comedians
About: Explores the lives of up-and-coming comics across the United States, offering a rare glimpse of the candid conversations and raw ingredients that become humor on stage.

Rana Abdelhamid Aziz Ramos - Title: From Queens
About: A six-part 10-minute, episodic documentary about ethnic enclaves in Queens, NY told through the lens of Native New Yorkers in the face of ongoing housing challenges.

Rose Lytle - Title: Missing Sisters
About: A look at life as a Native American in today's society and how we can stop the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women.

Ariana and the Rose - Title: Ariana and the Rose Album #2 (working title)
About: The second full-length album from Brooklyn electro-pop artist Ariana and the Rose.

BETTY (Elizabeth Ziff, Alyson Palmer, Amy Ziff) - Title: Untitled
About: In the 37th year of their life as a band, international indie pop trio BETTY is recording an explosive post-pandemic album about change, love, resilience, and the search for harmony.

Bianca Bonetti (Director), Emu Haynes (Cinematographer), Natalie Barth (Artist and Performer) - Title: The Fvck Alone
About: A music video for female pop artist Natalie Barth.

Brittain Ashford - Title: Hand Wringing/In The Wings
About: Music video for the song, "Hand Wringing/In The Wings," from Brittain Ashford's forthcoming album, "Trotter."

Caroline Kuhn - Title: Caroline Kuhn - Album
About: Caroline Kuhn's debut album is a journey all about growing up, forming, changing, tessellating through one’s adulthood with verve and grace.

Catherine Brookman/Sullivann - Title: If a song fades out, it's playing forever somewhere
About: If a song fades out, it’s playing forever somewhere is Catherine Brookman/Sullivann's debut album of heartbreak and waking up in the sky.

The Narcotix - Title: Dying
About: A sonic representation of the dying process.

Grace Kim - Title: Hypochondriac
About: Music video for artist HUNJIYA's single 'Hypochondriac' -- an autobiographical recollection of the singer's personal mental health journey and dependency on antidepressants.

Fatima Shaylin - Title: La Reina Latina
About: "La Reina Latina" the album is written entirely by Fatima Shaylin about various moments throughout her life that have shaped her into the person she is.

Jean Rohe - Title: New Weather
About: New Weather is a hybrid film/animation music video that takes stock of untenable conditions on the planet and in the human heart.

Goussy Célestin - Title: ANBA DLO: BENEATH THE WATER
About: This project incorporates Haitian indigenous wind instruments, with horns, rhythm section and voice in the style of a large jazz ensemble.

Joy Postell - Title: At Ease
About: Music video for Joy Postell's upcoming single, "At Ease."

Karina Daza - Title: Viajera: Musica Sin Fronteras (Traveler: Music Without Borders) - EP
About: Latina singer-songwriter Karina Daza releases "Tropi-folk" EP to highlight the beauty in Latinx culture and uplift Latinx women in the music industry.

Lourds Lane (Book/Music/Lyrics writer and violin-playing co-star of SuperYou Musical) - Title: AND NOW I RISE -- SuperYou Music Video
About: Watch and listen to SuperYou Musical writer and composer, Lourds Lane "Rise" up with her electric violin and cutting-edge music video celebrating our shared scars and power.

Mizan K. - Title: Find Your Ruby
About: A 7-song pop EP, 7 years in the making, informs on a thought-provoking level while staying within the bounds of entertainment.

Moon Kissed - Title: I'll See You in NYC
About: Moon Kissed's 3rd Studio Album.

Sabrina Song - Title: Untitled
About: Sabrina Song's self-produced debut album, exploring womanhood, relationship dynamics, and the intensity of being in love.

treya lam - Title: otherland
About: A chamber-protest album that explores grief as a catalyst for radical empathy, intersectional solidarity and repairing our relationship to the earth.

Amanda Ekery - Title: Árabe
About: "Árabe," which is about Syrian and Mexican shared culture and history on the El Paso border.

Angélica Negrón - Title: Chimera
About: A deeply personal chamber opera featuring drag queen performers that explores the complexity and boundlessness of identity.

anna rg - Title: SONGS of SICK-LAND
About: A song cycle composed by the chronically ill, exploring the sounds of the kingdom of the sick, its folksongs and rituals, the stories of its citizens.

Bonita Oliver (AKA French Leave) - Title: AR Arias: Sojourner Truth
About: A series of landmark based, augmented reality aria experiences which address the proliferated historical inaccuracies about this human rights activist.

Jessica Pavone - Title: Chamber concerto "Clamor" for string sextet and improvising bassoon soloist
About: "Clamor," a four-movement chamber music composition for string sextet and improvising bassoon soloist by Jessica Pavone, explores how gender norms have historically limited agency.

Lacy Rose - Title: Lispector
About: A surrealistic song cycle and concept album devoted to Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s glamorous, complicated, and radical life and works.

Luna Composition Lab - Title: Luna Composition Lab Fellows 2022–23 Premieres
About: This album features works written by the 2022–23 Luna Lab fellows—six young female, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming composers—performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Melvis Santa, Jazz Orishas - Title: IYALOSHAS
About: This project will be the recording of an music album made of original compositions and poems written and performed by myself.

Numina Records / Miriam Elhajli - Title: Khadija El Warzazia & Bnat El Houariyat
About: The first full length album documenting Moroccan all women's music and dance ensemble Khadija El Warzazia & Bnat El Houariyat.

Shayna Dunkelman - Title: NOMON
About: An experimental percussion and electronic music duo composed of sisters, Shayna and Nava Dunkelman.

Shoko Nagai - Title: Forbidden Lotus
About: A recording project by four of the best female improvisers/composers currently in New York City combining both western and eastern traditional instruments and electronics.

Sofia Rei - Title: Folk & Futurism
About: An album of original songs in collaboration with other female Latinx artists that explore the connection between traditional folk culture, alternative genres and digital technologies.

Suzanne Farrin - Title: Macabea
About: An opera by Suzanne Farrin, based on a novel by Clarice Lispector for singers and chamber ensembles that examines the spiritual manifestations of poverty and power.

Teodora Stepančić - Title: Works for Ensemble by Teodora Stepančić
About: A new album with music by Teodora Stepančić performed by Ordinary Affects.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Tina DiFeliciantonio, Director/Producer/Cinematographer, Naked Eye Productions Ltd.
Kristen Fitzpatrick, Managing Director, Field of Vision
Barbara Ghammashi, Senior Film Program Officer, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
Cynthia Kane, gbgg, freelance writer/producer
Den Quinsay, Managing Director, Bronx Documentary Center

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Melissa Friedling, Filmmaker/Associate Professor of Filmmaking, The New School
Lana Lin, Film Artist and Director of Documentary Studies, The New School
Ambreen Qureshi, Executive Director, Educational Video Center

DOCUMENTARY WEB SERIES

Samah Ali, DOC NYC Shorts Programmer
Tiffany Joy Butler, Assistant Curator of Public Programs at Museum of the Moving Image and Filmmaker
Lydia Cornett, Director and Independent Filmmaker
Luz Zamora, Documentary Filmmaker

FICTION FEATURE

Sharese Bullock-Bailey, Festival Director & Chief Innovation Officer, Urbanworld
Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Filmmaker
Emilia Ferreira, Feature Film Programmer, Brooklyn Film Festival

FICTION SHORT

Carolyn Funk, Duelle Films, Filmmaker
Ivone Margulies, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Hunter College, CUNY
Easmaine Michel
Naomi Munro, Art Director/Production Designer
Nashwa Zaman, Filmmaker

FICTION WEB SERIES

Jennifer S. Clark, Assistant Professor, Fordham University
Le'Andra Le Seur, Visual Artist
Claudia Zamora-Valencia, Filmmaker

THEATRE

Mia Chung, Playwright
Cynthia Flowers, Director of Soho Rep.
Susan Haskins-Doloff
Nidia Medina
Shayoni Mitra, Senior Lecturer, Department of Theatre, Barnard College, Columbia University
Hanna Novak, Producer for Elevator Repair Service and Playwright
Isabel Quinzaños Alonso
Martine Sainvil, Playwright
Monica L. Williams
Adrienne D. Williams, Director/Actor/Educator

MUSIC - CLASSICAL

Cândida Borges, Artist and Educator, Transeuntis Mundi
Elizabeth Hoffman, Composer, New York University, Faculty of Arts and Science
Cecilia Lopez
Fay Victor, Soundartist, Composer, Educator
Emily Wong

MUSIC GENERAL

Sheri Barclay
Erika Elliott, Executive Artistic Director, SummerStage and Charlie Parker Jazz Festival at City Parks Foundation
Violette Furton, Dubway Studios: Audio Engineer, Producer
Jennifer Le
Amy Rigby, Musician/Writer