CITY OF CINCINNATI ARTIST GRANT RECIPIENT WINS GOLD WORLD MEDAL IN HUMANITIES FOR FILM ON CREATIVITY AND AGING

Director/Producer Melissa Godoy's 2004 City of Cincinnati individual artist grant project Do Not Go Gently, a documentary about the power of imagination in aging, received a Gold World Medal in Humanities at the New York Festivals Film and Video Awards February 1. The documentary, distributed by American Public Television, has been aired on approximately 400 public television stations and has been screened at film festivals, conferences, and museums throughout the United States. The film features composer Leo Ornstein (at age 109), the "godfather of Modern Music"; Arlonzia Pettway (at age 82), the eldest of the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama; and Frederic Franklin (at age 90), the noted European dancer and former Cincinnati Ballet artistic director who made his professional debut in 1931 and is still working and dancing internationally. The documentary is narrated by journalist Walter Cronkite (at age 90).

The $4,750 grant from the City's Individual Artist Grant Program helped fund the offline editing of the segment on Frederic Franklin. "It was especially meaningful for me to use the Cincinnati funding for a stage that defined the creative storytelling aspect of the documentary," said Godoy. "The grant helped me to complete a rough cut that attracted funding to take the project to a national level."

Godoy’s 1999 City artist grant project, El Ritmo de la Vida (The Rhythm of Life), received a 2002 bronze Telly Award . The video documents aspects of life in Cincinnati's diverse Hispanic community. The national Telly Awards program, founded in 1980, showcases and gives recognition to outstanding non-network and cable TV commercials, film and video productions, and non-network TV programming.

For information about the City’s artist grant program, visit the Department of Community Development website at http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cdap/pages/-18070-/ or contact Carolyn Gutjahr at 352-4985.