***image1***Santa Fe not among grant recipients.
Seven New Mexico institutions will receive state money to bolster film industry training.
None are in Santa Fe.
Gov. Bill Richardson-along with the state Higher Education Department (HED)-announced last week $200,000 worth of "Film Boot Camp" grants.
Of the 14 schools that applied for a grant, only one, Santa Fe Community College, was local. And it was rejected.
"The Higher Education Department had their criteria," Barton Bond, coordinator of the SFCC Film/Video program, says. "And whatever it was that they wanted to accomplish, I guess we just weren't on the same page."
Matthew Martinez, an HED educational policy and program analyst who sat on the grant committee, says funding was based on the strength of proposals and by location.
"The most important thing was a strong commitment to both recruiting high school students and pushing those students toward film and media studies," Martinez says. "But one of the goals was to get good geographic representation throughout the state."
Recipients include New Mexico State University in Las Cruces ($40,000), Northern New Mexico College in Española ($20,000), the University of New Mexico-Gallup ($40,000) and Roswell's New Mexico Military Institute ($10,000).
The grants underscore the state's plans to sustain the film industry with homegrown talent. It also illustrates that Santa Fe film educators and workers face increasing competition from colleagues in other parts of the state.
"All of us are always, in every possible way, competing for resources," Bond says. "The bigger picture is that New Mexico has to build up its own media industry. If we don't grow a state-based media and film industry, the ebb and flow of the industry is going to kill us."
As for the College of Santa Fe, it did not apply for the grant money, although it did receive $1 million from the state in May 2005 to buttress its film programs. CSF's Garson Studios is currently the only major sound stage and studio facility in New Mexico, but it too will soon face competition from new studios in Rio Rancho [Outtakes, June 21: "
"] and Albuquerque. But Lisa Strout, the New Mexico Film Office director, says there's enough work to go around. "We need that infrastructure down in Albuquerque, but certain films are always going to come to Santa Fe, and Garson should continue to be very profitable and busy in the future," Strout says.
And CSF's New Mexico Filmmakers Intensive (NMFI) launches in January. NMFI Director Diane Schneier Perrin estimates that more than 95 percent of the inaugural NMFI class will come from throughout New Mexico. And, she says, funding for film education will only benefit the state, regardless of which institutions receive it.
"I don't see it as being competitive as much as it is communal," Perrin says. "I think that statewide film education is only going to bolster the industry and eventually help to sustain it. The more democratic the opportunities are, I think the better off everyone will be."
