UA Media Arts Professor Gets Award to Complete Her Film

Rich Amada
Aug. 30, 2000


Yuri Makino, assistant professor in media arts at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is the recipient of a $40,000 Roy W. Dean award to complete her feature-length film, "Alma." Makino was one of five finalists invited to Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre on Aug. 24 to give a four-minute "pitch" of her film to judges and film industry guests. One grant was awarded for film and one for video. The grant is awarded to a socially relevant film each year.

Makino's film, "Alma," was a semi-finalist for the Sundance Feature Film workshop last year. It is about a Chicana woman who discovers that she and her family are not American citizens when she is held in prison for holding false papers. The story revolves around the choices she is confronted with as a result of living with a controlling father and being caught up in the family's cycle of lying.

Makino and co-writer Gretchen Mauer, a teacher at Mendocino College in Ukiah, Calif., developed the idea for the film after hearing the real life story of a close friend whose father had told her never to discuss her imprisonment.

Makino, a graduate of the New York University Tisch School for the Arts, won last year's visual arts fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts with her short film, "Umeboshi" (Pickled Plums).

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