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 72 projects, led by women creatives, that will receive grants in the fifth round of the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre. The $1.3 million awarded in this round brings the grand total of funding to $10 million, allocated to a total of 415 recipients.

MOME awarded grants to projects in the following categories:

• 15 Fiction Short – each received up to $25,000
• 14 Theatre Productions – each received up to $50,000
• 12 General Music – each received up to $20,000
• 9 Classical/Jazz/Experimental Music – each received up to $20,000
• 9 Documentary Features – each received up to $50,000
• 4 Documentary Shorts – each received up to $25,000
• 3 Documentary Webisodes/Webseries – each received up to $20,000
• 3 Fiction Webisode/Webseries – each received up to $20,000
• 3 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 fifth round of the NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theatre in 2024.

Brownsville Bred, LLC - Title: Brownsville Bred
About: A Nuyorican girl gains resilience as she copes with the decline of the salsa musician father she once idolized and the notorious neighborhood she calls home.

Maaa Art - Title: 1001
About: A psychological thriller that takes place in an audition room of a famous director, where aspiring actresses slowly realize that the director's intentions are more than casting.

Sarah Friedland - Title: Familiar Touch
About: A coming of (old) age film. It follows an octogenarian woman's transition to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires.

Alice Liu - Title: Cicada Season
About: Best friends Parker and Lily do everything, even going to court.

Amie Song - Title: Three
About: At her birthday party, a Chinese woman who has recently moved to the United States to live with her daughter tries to keep her daughter's secrets from her new friends.

Amina Sutton - Title: Beach Floaty Thingys
About: Sisters Grace and Hope have been looking forward to this much-needed vacation to exotic Myrtle Beach, SC all year long. But their girls’ weekend gets derailed when they are asked to bring their four rowdy nieces and nephews along. Beachy Floaty Thingys is an ode to vacations gone wrong, a love letter to relatives who step in as guardians, and more importantly, a reminder that no matter what, no one can take away your joy.

Connie Shi - Title: The Rebirth
About: A overworked waitress takes a black market abortion pill that gives her an unexpected side effect.

Ifeyinwa Arinze - Title: Breastmilk
About: A new Nigerian mother, Aduke, struggles to breastfeed her baby while navigating her tense relationship with her husband as well as her family’s expectations. In order to support her newborn child, she must confront her past.

Kathy Meng - Title: Willow and Wu
About: Finally receiving a day-off after being recently dumped, young and anxious assistant Willow is ordered to aid the elusive husband of her high-powered boss with an unusual task.

Ke Liu - Title: Same Star Above Us (AKA: Runaway to Paradise)
About: As she prepares to end her nomad life and return home, a middle-aged immigrant woman who has run away from home for months is thrown off course when she encounters a young escort stranded in a remote town.

Kersti Bryan - Title: Stalled In Eight Etudes
About: Eight lives intersect in a municipal courthouse bathroom and find a surprising humanity.

Shaina Feinberg - Title: Cleo From 8:20 to 2:35
About: Cleo has six hours and fifteen minutes between drop-off and pick-up to revel in her adult life, but an ominous alert on her phone shifts her focus to anxiously counting down the moments until she's reunited with her children.

Shruti Parekh - Title: Homebody
About: Facing eviction after her mother’s death, a struggling artist searches for creative ways to defend her right to stay in her family’s Brooklyn apartment.

Sunita Prasad - Title: Sleep Training
About: When a new parent’s postpartum depression devolves into bizarre hallucinations, an escape from motherhood becomes necessary.

Tara Sheffer - Title: Scratch-Off
About: A home healthcare worker steals her dementia patient’s winning scratch-off lottery ticket.

Xinhui Ma - Title: Flamingo in the Garden
About: A young Chinese woman’s healing journey overcoming her traumatic injury at a Moroccan hospital, laced with morphine induced forbidden romance out of a dream like garden.

Yulia Ruditskaya - Title: The Hare
About: Follows the intertwined journeys of a hunted rabbit and a persecuted poet, drawing powerful parallels between the silencing of Belarusian literary voices during Stalin’s purges and the ongoing repression of artists today.

Zahida Pirani- Title: Anindita
About: A curious girl faces off with a privileged newcomer in her rapidly changing neighborhood. When the good-natured competition goes too far, she is forced to realize what she has or risks losing it all.

Kea Trevett - Title: As You Like It
About: Apocalyptic Artists Ensemble presents a 5-part miniseries adaptation of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, filmed in NYC theaters.

Maarit Hara & Marina Gasparyan (Tall Women Productions) - Title: GDOMOD
About: GDOMOD (Go Down On Me Or Die) is a dark comedy and a female revenge fantasy about a group of women who kill men that don't go down on the women they are sleeping with.

Talia Fayaz, Cecilia Yanez - Title: Sexless in the City
About: After her long-term boyfriend dumps her, Type-A planner Nia invites herself to a night out with the girlfriends she's been ghosting.

Anna Capunay - Title: La Gota Fria: The Cold Sweat
About: What is it about a terminal illness that makes people laugh? Nothing you say? Maybe this new play by Anna Capunay can make you dance, laugh, and think about your choices involving cancer treatments. So let's go back in time to Queens, NY in the 1990s when you, your family and your friends were dancing to new and classic Salsa, Merengue and Latin Pop!

Bailey Williams and Emma Horwitz, with Rattlestick Theatre and New Georges - Title: Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods
About: Set inside an intimate archive of towering bankers boxes, Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods teases a literary reading, a dialogue, an interview, and a magazine.

Carolyn M. Brown; Theater Resources Unlimited - Title: Stormé 
About: It took one punch to start a gay revolution. It took one gender-bending lesbian to throw that punch. This is her story!

Diana Chery-Ramírez; Teatro Círculo - Title:  Los Garabatos De La Luna/the Scribbles Of The Moon 
About: Teatro Círculo will tour free performances of Diana Chery-Ramírez’ Los Garabatos De La Luna/the Scribbles Of The Moon  - a bilingual play with original music about immigration and migrants – to 5 Older Adult Centers in Latinx immigrant/migrant communities.

Hend Ayoub - Title:  Home? Or a Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness 
About: In Israel, she’s Palestinian. In the Arab world, she's Israeli. In America, she's an “Other.” An autobiographical one-woman show about her search for the place most people take for granted: Home.

Hit The Lights! Co. - Title: Isla
About: A bilingual puppetry musical, where three sisters escape from their war-torn island and embark on a journey to redefine the meaning of home.

Megan Campisi, on behalf of Long Story Short - Title: Peregrination; a mask show about People and Borders
About: A wordless play with original music and sound design exploring journeys of displacement and migration.

Sarah Knight - Title: Hot Flash
About: A new musical tribute to Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women, based on the Blues Award-nominated documentary of the same title. This all senior, multi-cultural trio left home and jobs in midlife to pursue their dreams of playing music full-time — succeeding for twenty-five years.

Soomi Kim - Title: Gut (굿)
About: Performer and theatre maker Soomi Kim explores themes of loss, mortality, and visionary AAPI lives in her fifth and final installment through Gut (굿), an autobiographical dance theatre work presented in three acts.

The Anthropologists - Title: Axes, Herbs and Satchels
About: Rooted in the history and embodied wisdom of doulas and midwives, Axes, Herbs and Satchels is a celebration of traditional knowledge held in the Black birth worker community and a potent examination of maternal mortality.

The Hearth - Title: The Hearth's world premiere production of "Push Party"
About: Nia Akilah Robinson’s "Push Party" is a lively ensemble comedy about six Black women trying to uphold fifteen years of friendship at a post-birthing party in Harlem.

The Public Theater - Title: Jordans
About: The NYC Women's Fund generously supported production costs associated with The Public Theater's world premiere production of Jordans, written by Ife Olujobi and directed by Whitney White.

Waterwell - Title: The Ford / Hill Project
About: History will be revisited.

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya | LEIMAY - Title: A Meal
About: A multi-sensorial live performance: part-ritual, part-celebration, part-installation, and part-dinner by critically acclaimed multidisciplinary artist duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya. A Meal explores our deep connection with food—where it comes from, what we eat, and who we share it with.

Anjali Kamat - Title: The Return
About: An Indian-American dismayed at the right-wing takeover of Indian society and her family speaks to her Pakistan-born collaborator in Brooklyn who tells her stories of why he fell in love with India.

Cionín Lorenzo - Title: On Three Wheels
About: The feature documentary On Three Wheels turns the lens on families raising children with disabilities through the eyes of a Puerto Rican bike mechanic who adapts bikes for children with limited mobility, giving them access to the freedom, joy- and physical therapy- a bike ride brings for the first time in their lives.

Elaine Epstein - Title: Arrest The Midwife
About: The shocking arrest of several midwives in a rural healthcare desert leaves a community stranded, and spurs the emergence of a very unlikely group of political activists – Amish and Mennonite women who break with their traditions to stand up and speak out for women’s reproductive rights.

Isabel Alcántara Atalaya - Title: The Age of Water
About: A rural community is torn apart when three children die of cancer. A group of women committed to uncovering the cause, unexpectedly expose radioactivity in their water, setting off a battle against authorities determined to undercut their efforts.

Joy Birdsong, Producer, James Baldwin Project - Title: James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket -- One-Hour Version
About:To create a one-hour digital version of an 87-minute 16mm film classic: James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket (1989).

Shanti Avirgan - Title: My Mom, The Scientist
About: A film examining the seldom told story of the challenges and untapped potential around African Americans' participation in the sciences, through the life of the filmmaker's mother Rudean Leinaeng.

Sisa Bueno/Abstract Nomadic Media - Title: For Venida, For Kalief
About: Debuts the poetry of Venida Brodnax Browder, mother of Kalief Browder, and weaves a lyrical and cinematic mosaic exploring the movement to convert Rikers Island- the world’s most notorious jail- into a renewable energy center.

Te Shima Brennen, Rajvi Desai - Title: Mother Wit
About: Three Black trans women grieve the death of their matriarch and mentor who had fought all her life to set them on a path of education, excellence and liberation, as they fight to fulfill the promises they made to her.

Untitled Solidarity Project - Title: Untitled Solidarity Project
About: A mosaic portrait of solidarity told thru the Teamster labor union’s campaign to organize 350,000 UPS workers in a collective fight for dignity and safety on the job.

Emily Clark - Title: Is Gay Marriage Next?
About: Artfully navigates the ebb and flow of LGBTQ+ rights in America through the lens of a 2003 Newsweek cover that changed the director’s life.

Emily Strong - Title: Tasting Heritage
About: A coming-of-culture story about a Korean-American woman's savory journey to reclaim her identity through food.

Hannah Rafkin - Title: Keeper
About: A Bronx beekeeper and his 19-year-old daughter care for their hives—and each other—in the wake of a life-threatening diagnosis.

Taylor M. Hosking - Title: West Side Familia
About: Through intimate portraits of this tight-knit community, West Side Familia follows the story of a Puerto Rican-led biker gang and community care group from the ‘70s that’s grappling with the preservation of their public traditions and cultural identity in the hyper-gentrified neighborhood of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Evie Joy - Title: How We Love (Working Title)
About: A musical documentary series of varied love stories, scientific strategies, and an original score, featuring couples and experts from across the globe.

Loretta Howard, Co-Founder, Exceutive Director, On This Spot NYC: Stories of Pioneering Women Artists - Title: On This Spot NYC: Stories of Pioneering Women Artists, Season 3
About: Tells the stories of boundary-breaking women artists through short-form documentary videos.

Shawn Batey - Title: We Keep Us Safe
About: Five short stories of five activists in the NYC Black Lives Matter Movement.

Adai Song - Title: Electric Silk Roads: Modernizing Heritage from East to West
About: A bold fusion of East-West classics, reimagining iconic songs that have historically bridged cultures, now remixed with modern electropop energy by a team of dynamic female creators.

Crystal Yu - Title: Hocus Pocus
About: A visually enchanting music video for I’MMORTAL’s upcoming single, celebrating the power of embracing your authentic self and confidently expressing femininity.

Danielle E. Moore - Title: Audrey: The Musical Cast Recording
About: A musical theater concept album that explores the life of actress and activist Audrey Hepburn.

Emi Night - Title: Goodnight Lou
About: An album of contemporary experimental folk songs composed by Emi Night for her band, Strawberry Runners, written as letters to loved ones, illustrating intimate portraits of fictionalized characters from the songwriter's life and imagination.

Joël René Scoville - Title: 2&1: A Harlem Love Story with Loose Morals, The Concept Album
About: It’s the Harlem Renaissance and Olivia is madly in love with white-passing flapper Irene. But when Irene schemes a sham marriage for money, their duo becomes a trio and Olivia must decide how much is enough for love.

Julia Easterlin - Title: A Field Beyond
About: A new album of experimental folk music, a long time coming.

King Like Mom - Title: Respect
About: King Like Mom’s third album — a raw, heartfelt exploration of love, fear, identity, and sisterhood through the power of music.

Lisa Bielawa, composer - Title: La Ballonniste - or - Balloon: A Hot Air Opera
About: A comic opera with media elements by composer Lisa Bielawa and librettist Claire Solomon produced by Kaufman Music Center showcasing soprano Britt Hewitt as 18th century French opera singer Élisabeth Tible: the first woman to ascend in a hot air balloon in 1784.

Megumi Saruhashi - Title: Seven Veils
About: A collection of compositions that speak the unspeakable.

Qi Ming - Title: Green How I Want You Green
About: A musical exploration of the deep, symbiotic relationships in nature, blending plant-generated vibrations, organic sounds, world music heritage, and electronic textures to evoke a soulful reconnection with the Earth.

Reem DRĖĖĖMY Abdou, The Collective BAE - Title: Mother & Water
About: A transformational eco-cultural transmission amplifying ancient ancestral wisdom via the electronic music of the future.

Sonia Rao - Title: Untitled
About: Sonia Rao's fourth album will be released in October 2025.

Bergsonist - Title: ASL - ﺃَﺻﻞ
About: Electronic music album blending Moroccan heritage with contemporary electronic sounds and techniques.

Carrie Frey - Title: Seaglass: Works for String Quartet by Carrie Frey
About: An album featuring Carrie Frey's four sci-fi inspired string quartets written for The Rhythm Method.

Cecilia Lopez and Zeena Parkins - Title: Redshifts
About: “Redshifts” (working title) will create an improvisatory score, record an album based on the score and shoot an accompanying video.

Kebra-Seyoun Charles - Title: Enby
About: Love, loss and lots of partying.

Kissatou - Title: My Love Story
About: A new EP of 4 love songs.

Magos Herrera - Title: Opera "Primero sueño" First I dream, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz in her own wordsPrimero Sueño "First I dream"
About: The imagistic work of Sor Juana Ines de la cruz is the recording of the music created for the operatic work by singer composer Magos Herrera and composer Paola Prestini to be presented at The Met cloisters in New York City in Jan 2025.

Muyassar Kurdi - Title: Poetic Geographies
About: An embodied experimentation of untold stories through voice and electronics.

Renee Goust - Title: Que Se Cuide Ese Muchacho (Banda) (Spanish for: "That Boy Better Watch Himself")
About: An original composition by Brooklyn-based Mexican-American singer-songwriter and queer feminist activist Renee Goust, that shamelessly denounces the sexual assault she has survived, creating a safe space of empowerment for survivors, through the language of “banda sinaloense”, a popular Northern Mexican Music genre that is most often misogynistic, but is now disruptively reappropriated to send a clear message to abusers: “Justice will be served.”

Shelley Nicole - Title: The Tao of Abbey Lincoln
About: Through an Afrofuturist lens I will use archived writings of legendary jazz vocalist/songwriter Abbey Lincoln to create an immersive musical experience called “The Tao of Abbey Lincoln.”

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Abby Lord, Programs Associate, Perspective Fund
Bedatri Datta Choudhury, Culture Journalist and Documentary Film Professional
Chandler Phillips, Community Programs Manager, Brown Girls Doc Mafia
Lana Lin, Filmmaker
Maya Cueva, Filmmaker

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Anto(n) Astudillo, Program Director, Millennium Film Workshop
Christiamilda Correa, Director, Development & Communications, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking
Karen McMullen, Festival Director and Head of Programming, Urbanworld Film Festival + DOC NYC Film Festival
Maya Cozier, Filmmaker
Roselly Torres, Distribution & Marketing Director, Third World Newsreel

DOCUMENTARY WEB SERIES

Den Quinsay, Managing Director, Bronx Documentary Center
JT Takagi, Executive Director, Third World Newsreel
Neyda Martinez, Producer
Samah Ali, Senior Programmer of Shorts & DOC NYC U for DOC NYC and a Shorts Programmer at SFFILM
Sandra Forman, Administrator at DGA Assistant Director Training Program

FICTION FEATURE

Isabel Sandoval, Filmmaker and Actor
Jordyn Jay Smith, Founder and Executive Director, Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, Inc.
Kia Brooks, Deputy Director, The Gotham Film & Media Institute
Yvonne Russo, Director and Producer
Zoya Baker, Filmmaker

FICTION SHORT

Alia Ayman, Festival Programmer
Aly Migliori, Filmmaker
Emily Ann Hoffman, Animator and Short Film Director
Omonike Akinyemi, CEO/Artistic Director, Image Quilt Dance Theater
Stacey Marbrey, Program Manager, Artist and Critics Academies, Film at Lincoln Center

FICTION WEB SERIES

Annick Laurent, Media Coordinator, American Documentary, Inc.
Judy Lei, Filmmaker
Mahen Bonetti, Executive Director, African Film Festival, Inc.
Sarah Luciano, Associate Director of Special Programs
Taylor Walker, Editor, Director, and Producer

THEATRE

Christin Eve Cato, Playwright, Dramaturg, and Performing Artist
Cristina Pitter, Founder of The Ashe Collective and Community Director of Pipeline Theatre Company
Kimberly Golding, Public Programs Specialist, Dia Art Foundation
Kyle June Williams, Actor, Writer, and Comic
Martine Sainvil, Director of Education, PITCHBLACK Immersive Experiences
Pia Kishore Agrawal, Executive Director, Staten Island Arts
Shadawn Smith, Executive Director, The Billie Holiday Theatre
Sifiso Mabena, Multidisciplinary Theatre Artist
Yuki Kawahisa, Actor, Theatre creator, Performing artist

MUSIC - CLASSICAL/JAZZ/EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

Alicia Hall-Moran, Composer and Performer
Becky Foinchas, Composer and Multi-Instrumentalist
Leila Bordreuil, Composer
Mari Kimura, Violinist and Composer
Svjetlana Bukvich, Composer

MUSIC GENERAL

Alyana Vera, Community Marketing and Editorial Manager, National Sawdust
Bunny Michael, Multidisciplinary Artist
Claire Marie Lim, Multi-Disciplinary Artist
Esther Quansah, Composers and Multi-Instrumentalists