2025 Grant Recipients & Filmmaker Bios
Annie Ersinghaus
The Land of Sacrifice: The Burden of New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Extraction is an environmental documentary that explores the oil and gas crisis unfolding in the state of New Mexico. As oil and gas production rapidly expands in NM, the film explores the severe and disproportionate impacts on marginalized, low income, and Indigenous communities in rural Northwestern and Southeastern parts of the state. Featuring the NMLAWS coalition and its groundbreaking lawsuit, the documentary highlights a powerful legal approach to seeking justice and amplifying the voices of affected residents. It also presents practical policy solutions urgently needed to protect public health and address the growing challenges of climate change. This film will ask us to reevaluate what health and progress truly mean to us as a society and to start listening to the voices calling for help. The film seeks to convey a story that is instrumental in shaping the future of our state and world.
Watch the film here.
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Annie is an award-winning independent filmmaker from Las Cruces, New Mexico. She enjoys the art of storytelling and finds passion in documentary filmmaking, especially when it works to bring attention to the complicated relationship between humans and our environment. As a writer, poet, musician, and artist, she draws upon her bond with nature to explore the depths of human interconnection. She was awarded Outstanding Undergraduate at New Mexico State University where she graduated in 2023.
Peter Monro &
TrueKids 1
Mind Over Meals: Youth Diet in New Mexico is a short documentary that will target a critical aspect of teen life: Diet. What are students in this state eating? What do they have access to and why? Are students being educated on the health impacts of the food they consume? These questions are vital to the health, both mental and physical, of the youth in our state. There is certainly a long list of statistics to be garnered from research into this subject, none of which will be convenient to hear. However, if we do not change our behavior in regards to food consumption, the population of our state will continue to demonstrate serious health risks and develop life threatening diseases. The goal of this short documentary is to stimulate discussion among school officials, parents, and students of this important issue.
Watch the film here.
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After attending USC's BFA Acting program, Peter got behind the camera and developed his filmmaking skills on shorts, music videos as well as a narrative feature, Days Together. In 2020 he became the Director of Media with True Kids 1, a youth media and technology nonprofit based in Taos, New Mexico that mentors middle and high school students in the field of digital creation around Taos County.
Michael Santillanes
Fractured Narratives: Immigration and Disinformationin New Mexico is a short documentary film that delves into the role of misinformation in shaping public perceptions about immigration in the United States, with a focus on its effects in New Mexico. The film will explore how anti-immigrant rhetoric has shaped public opinion in NM, clouded the true economic and cultural contributions of immigrants, and enabled attacks on vulnerable communities. Through interviews with immigration legal workers, immigrant-serving organizations, community members, and other local stakeholders, the film aims to provide an authentic and informed perspective on the ongoing impact of anti-immigrant propaganda.
Watch the film here.
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Along with his love for music, books, and art, Michael A. Santillanes has had a life-long passion for film dating back to early childhood. During his teenage years, Michael enjoyed making short films with his brother and friends. In 2017 Michael worked as part of a small crew on the PBS feature documentary, Ol’ Max Evans: The First 1,000 Years, He earned the Film Technician Certificate from Central New Mexico Community College in 2020, and in 2024 was selected to participate in the highly competitive New Voices New Mexico screenwriting lab for his narrative feature film script, Española. Michael believes deeply in the power of film to move the human spirit, and is interested in making films that portray authentic New Mexican stories.
Thomas Manning
Reentering a New World. My goal is to provide, in an immersive documentary, a sample of what life after prison looks like. What worries the average offender about returning to society? What surprises them as a challenge to their reintegration into society? How are they being helped, and what discrepancies are there to inhibit offered services from getting to the people that need them most? Most importantly, how is this community in Albuquerque, New Mexico helping to fill in the gaps? What does the human element of this process look like? And is this a hopeful endeavor or one to arouse despair?
Watch the film here.
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On October 2nd, 2024, it was exactly 1 year from the day I was released from prison to Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this time, I have felt in equal parts hope and despair. Opportunity and disadvantage. My hope is to display a small portion of the microcosm of the reentry that intermingles on many levels. Many of the programs directed at reducing recidivism are in fact a generational series of once ‘criminals’ helping one another. I am currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking at the University of New Mexico.
Erica Nguyen
With or Without Water is a road memoir that honors the Vietnamese diaspora by connecting elements of ancestral landscape with everyday acts of remembrance. Serenaded by grandmother’s beloved folk songs, a second generation Vietnamese-American encounters self through traditional theater on a distant water stage. A visual diary of the journey taken to connect heritage and life in the desert or New Mexico.
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Erica is a Vietnamese American documentary director based in New Mexico and as a grassroots filmmaker and traveler she is motivated to collaborate through mutual self-study. Her interdisciplinary background in Sociolinguistics and Ethnography frames her process around how estrangement from our origins manifests in our bodies. A Vietnamese-American raised in California, Erica belongs to the modern diaspora that seeks to transform generational trauma into a reclaimed sense of belonging. While involved in Peruvian documentary activism, she directed a nonfiction feature titled Shadow Weavers, about the endangered languages transcribed in hats. She is based rurally in New Mexico, where she moonlights between outdoor rock climbing, experiential education, and seed farming.
Ashley Elizabeth Gallegos
Red Jaguar: Corn Mother is a documentary about Concha Conceptión Garcia Allen (73); a local Aztec-Danzante-Jefa, curendera, Huichole/Zapoteca/Oaxacan native, somatic therapist and her danzante group based in Santa Fe, ‘Danza Tonantzin de Analco.’. The film will include an interview with Concha about her stories on her ‘Red Path’, (Aztec Danzante chosen path as a dancer) through her life. Her struggles and breakthroughs, her dancing history and her plant medicine wisdom, her losses and her gains in family and life. The film will be a piece on Aztec Danza in Santa Fe but mostly focusing on Concha’s role as she is a crucial local gateway for the last 30+ years for lost youth and dancers that have been following her for decades. It will also include interviews with dancers about how Concha and her groupo have affected their lives.
Watch the film here.
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I’m a mestiza Aztec Danzante, New Mexican resident of seven years and all-round life-long musician, writer and artist, originally from Chicago. This is my first documentary of my own. My experience with film has been as an actor and musician and as crew. I have worked on some of my own films and animations at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am making this documentary on my own and have been dreaming up this project for the last year. My jefas have finally granted me permission to create this project and film them a few months ago and shortly after, a good friend of mine, told me about this grant opportunity and sent it to me. Low and behold, here I am.
Heathen Seagraves
A Strong Woman tells the story of transgender man attempting to understand his fraught relationship with his mother. Through a series of interviews, he discovers this fraught relationship is an inherited one, an almost direct mirror of his mother’s relationship with his grandmother. A Strong Woman interrogates the relationship between social progress and resentment between generations.
Watch the film here.
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Heathen Seagraves (he/they/él) is an outgoing multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A recent graduate of University of New Mexico’s Film and Digital Media program, Heath is eager to share stories from the many communities that shaped his identity. They love long walks in the desert, slow cinema, and fostering empathy between people of different backgrounds. His dedication to building community has manifested in short documentaries about local creatives and community projects such as the 2023 FLOW Celebration in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They are excited to continue making work that celebrates shared experiences of the diverse peoples of New Mexico.
Jay-Alan Miller
I Eat Therefore I Am is a documentary that centers on several farm/ranches in New Mexico, and juxtaposes traditional farming practices, with more modern regenerative practices, and illustrates the enormous benefits (ecological, economical, health, etc.) of adopting these new procedures. This documentary will focus on three diverse farm-ranches in New Mexico, each showcasing a successful transition from traditional farming to regenerative practices. These examples will span different scales—large, medium, and small—and illustrate how regenerative methods can be adapted to various types of operations. Through intimate visuals of the land, livestock, and farming processes, the film will convey the real-world impact of these practices.
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Jay-Alan is an Albuquerque native and had a successful career in film-music in Europe, orchestrating scores for two Academy Award winning composers, and one Academy "Best Music & Best Film" collaboration. After 15 years as an arranger/orchestrator, Jay-Alan recently put down the piano to pursue his interest in documentary filmmaking with a keen interested in many social issues. Still at his "first-arms", but already a cinematographer credit on the documentary "Silent Echoes" by Susanna Calhoun.