The fellowship is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which might be familiar to all you listen to NPR, specifically the list of its sponsors. The foundation began after billionaire banker John D. MacArthur died in 1978 and left 92% of his estate to begin it. It's one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the U.S. and is based in Chicago! The foundation (under its General Program, the same program that supports journalistic institutions like NPR) thus gives grants to arts and cultural programs within the Windy City.
For this fellowship, you don't apply. Rather, anonymous people nominate you to an anonymous selection committee who then notifies you that you won by a nice phone call. :)
Last year the award was given to a diverse group of professionals including a poet, an investigative reporter, an evolutionary biologist, an economist, a painter, a papermaker, and an ornithologist among others.
I first heard about the fellowship when I watched Synecdoche, New York, the first film Charlie Kaufman directed. The main character in the movie receives the fellowship (he's a playwright) and uses it to construct a play about his life, meticulously creating sets that mirror the places he and the people in his life go and hiring actors to live it out. The project goes on for years and you can see how the people, who are the project's focus, age as it seemingly fails to come to fruition. The film itself got mixed reviews - it's long and complicated and weird, but I enjoyed it. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the main character Cayden, a brilliant man though he goes about his life in lacluster, fearful way that is pretty pathetic. I never warmed up to him as a character... Come to think of it, one of the few if any characters in the movie that the audience can like is Samantha Morton's character who serves as Cayden's companion. She is the light of the story, all the other people make you remember how much people suck. Despite the lack of heart-warming characters (does that say anything about Kaufman's view of humanity?) it was a really interesting, complex story let alone movie to make. Tell me what you think when you watch the film (which I hope you do)!
Watch the trailer! see if you can tell when he's using the fellowship!
I think the idea for the fellowship is amazing. I was looking up some of the fellows' previous work today and it's all inspiring and amazing work! I want to try to apply for a Fulbright Student Grant within the coming year, so it's exciting for me to see how programs similar to the Fulbright program work and give people the opportunity to do great work that may have otherwise gone undone.
No comments:
Post a Comment