Carole Chazin
In honor of longtime NYWIFT member and supporter, New York Women in Film & Television has established the Carole Chazin Human Trafficking Awareness Grant.
The grant for $7,500 will be awarded to a woman director for a recently completed documentary film or a documentary work-in-progress film on human trafficking.
Films must be the length of 30 minutes or under.
How to Apply
Please fill out the application available for download here, and send that with the following supplemental information as separate PDFs to grants@nywift.org, subject line: Carole Chazin Grant 2018.
1. Application form
2. 1 – 2 page description of the project
3. Project budget, indicating amount raised to date
4. List of key creative personnel with one-paragraph bios
5. Online link of the work-in-progress (please make sure links remain live through March 1st, 2019)
Application deadline: December 3rd, 2018 by 11:59pm EST.
Questions? Contact Terry Lawler at 212-679-0870 or tlawler@nywift.org.
SPECIAL THANKS TO JIM CONE, CAROLE CHAZIN GRANT SPONSOR
About Carole Chazin
Carole Deborah Chazin was born February 12, 1937, in Brooklyn, the daughter of Milton and Sarah Chazin. She became a grade school teacher in Commack and Great Neck, on Long Island, and went on to earn a Ph.D. from New York University. Her thesis was on the use of film in conceptual learning. After graduation, she taught classes at the School of Visual Arts, John Jay College, and New York University. She performed assignments as varied as teaching writing skills for inmates at Riker’s Island and effective speaking for police at Fort Apache, The Bronx.
As an undergraduate, she spent a summer abroad in Italy, living with a family in Brescia. This experience engendered a lifelong interest in Italy and Italian culture. She became a freelance contributor to the Italian-American publication Oggi, writing articles from a personal perspective on cinema, theater, art and design, music. sports—anything that piqued her interest and was related to Italians or Italian-Americans.
Carole’s interests were varied and wide-ranging. She worked as an actress, a director, then as a producer of theater workshops. She made several short films and developed feature film projects as a producer. She once performed as a stand up comedian at Gotham Comedy Club. For many years, she attended the Cannes Film Festival, as well as festivals in the U.S. Later she became a regular participant at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone, Italy, and the Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, often writing articles for the daily Italian language newspaper, America Oggi, about the films and people she encountered there.
Carole loved to travel and her sense of adventure took her to many places, including China, Cuba, and India three times. She sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in an 82-foot sloop with a crew of eight, an adventure that found them becalmed in the Sargasso Sea for several days and then tossed about with sails dropped during a storm that lasted two days. In 2009 she enjoyed her third trip around the world—a gift from her father who, in his will, urged her to go and have a good time. She was interested in people and made friends wherever she went. She carried inspirational gifts wherever she went, including $2 bills to give to the homeless, string bracelets for good luck from India, glass crystals for those in need of more light in their lives, and pairs of dice for those who needed help making key life decisions.
Sports were another lifelong interest. Carole’s father had been a boxer in his youth, and encouraged her interest in sports. The two of them often attended horse races together. Carole was a member of the New York Road Runners Club, and she completed three New York City marathons (1996, 1999, and 2002). She also volunteered with the Achilles Club to assist people with disabilities during the New York City Marathon. For almost two decades, she was the manager and a player with a co-ed softball team that was started in the beginning by NYWIFT members, the Kayla All-Stars, that played regularly in Central Park. Carole earned a pilot’s license and was the co-founder of the Seaplane Pilots Association, which began out of a shoebox at the Little Ferry Seaplane base in New Jersey and eventually became a global organization.
Volunteer activities were an important part of Carole’s life. She served on the board of the Classic Stage Company for more than 20 years. She participated in fundraising for the restoration of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Virginia. She was an active member of New York Women in Film and Television for many years. She raised funds to place a bronze plaque honoring filmmaker Shirley Clarke on the Chelsea Hotel where Clarke lived for 25 years. Carole worked with Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum to make a video about a senior center to help prevent its closing.
Her Jewish heritage was important to Carole. She was an active member of the Brotherhood Synagogue, located in her Gramercy Park neighborhood. She had learned Yiddish as a child, and worked with author Isaac Bashevis Singer, helping to translate some of his stories. She made a short film with Mr. Singer at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, entitled The Pigeon Feeder. She also interviewed him for the PBS series, Heritage: Civilization and the Jews.
