Trump Administration's Termination Of Arts Grants Hammers Film Festivals Nationwide: 'We're Sounding The Alarm Bell'

Yahoo

09-05-2025

The nonprofit behind the prestigious True/False documentary festival in Columbia, MO got its notice by email last Friday night: your National Endowment for the Arts grant has been terminated.
Hours after President Trump announced his intention to eliminate the NEA, grant recipients began receiving word that their funding was being yanked: dance programs, literary festivals, regional theater groups, youth writing workshops, rural arts initiatives, music education programs, museums across the 50 states. Film festivals nationwide, like True/False, are taking a direct hit.
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'We were already in a little bit of a tight situation' budget-wise, says Andrea Luque Káram, executive director of Ragtag Film Society, which puts on True/False. Their grant was for $30,000. 'It's just forcing us to really pivot… There's so many organizations that are impacted by this.'
Another case in point: CIFF — the Camden International Film Festival in Maine — a program of the nonprofit Points North Institute. It had been approved for a $45,000 NEA grant. 'We got the termination notice on Friday night,' says Sean Flynn, artistic director and co-founder of Points North Institute. 'Basically [it said], your grant is no longer aligned with the priorities of the administration.'
Frameline – the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival – also got word from the NEA last Friday that it was rescinding a $20,000 grant for Fiscal Year 2025. 'The concerted effort to defund identity-centered arts institutions, including LGBTQ+ organizations like Frameline, is nothing short of an attempt to censor our art, control our history, and erase our lived experiences,' Allegra Madsen, Frameline's executive director, said in a statement provided to Deadline. 'We remain committed to uplifting queer and trans artists and their stories. More than ever, our whole community needs to show up and support each other.'
True/False, CIFF, and Frameline are speaking out, but a climate of fear is prompting other festivals that received NEA grants to lay low. The Sundance Institute did not respond to inquiries from Deadline about the status of its most recent NEA grant; it has received more than $3.5 million in NEA funding going back to 1998, including $100,000 in Fiscal Year 2024 'to support artistic and professional development resources and incubator labs for independent nonfiction filmmakers.' Similarly, Slamdance declined comment. It received a $30,000 grant in FY 2024 for 'a curated film program featuring creators with visible and non-visible disabilities.'
'I will say on behalf of a lot of film festivals, it's a really scary time,' comments Barbara Twist, executive director of the Film Festival Alliance (FFA), a group that advocates for festivals and champions independent cinema. 'Some individual film festivals aren't able to speak up on behalf of themselves. And so, we're sounding the alarm bell and saying, this is something people need to pay attention to.'
FFA has been assembling a database of festivals and other exhibitors that lost NEA grants. 'I've got 35 that I've heard so far that have either been terminated or withdrawn,' notes Twist, 'but I believe that over 90 percent of the grants were either terminated or withdrawn.'
Twist declined to cite specific festivals that have lost funding other than those that have chosen to make their situation known publicly. Along with Sundance, the status of NEA grants to many institutions remains uncertain, among them the Austin Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival and Palm Springs International ShortFest, Seattle International Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, and the New Orleans Film Society which puts on the New Orleans Film Festival.
The National Endowment for the Arts was founded in 1965, with a mission to foster and sustain 'an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States.' The cancellation emails sent out last Friday said, 'The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.' The new priorities, per the email: 'elevate the Nation's HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster Al competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs…' The notice told current grantees, 'Your project… unfortunately does not align with these priorities.'
That justification rings hollow to Luque Káram, head of the nonprofit behind True/False. 'The reason given is also kind of raising eyebrows because I don't think we are outside of that agenda,' she said. 'I think we do very rich artistic work and do a great job of showing so many points of view and cultures through our programming year-round.'
Only a few weeks ago, the Trump administration gutted the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supports cultural institutions, universities, museums, and individual documentary filmmakers. And before that, Pres. Trump booted out half the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and had himself named chair. Seeing that writing on the wall, some festivals made sure to spend the money from their current grants before the termination letters went out. But going forward, they may be out of luck.
'With the funding going low again it's really hard sometimes to make a case to even stay open from a numbers perspective — not from our mission perspective,' comments Ragtag's Luque Káram. 'I think we have all the reasons and the commitment and the willingness and the passion to stay open and to continue to live our values through our day-to-day programming.'
The NEA grant terminations come as Pres. Trump threatens to impose a 100 percent tariff on movies produced outside the U.S., declaring Hollywood was 'dying a very fast death' because other countries have lured productions abroad through lucrative financial incentives. In a social media post, he called that situation a 'National Security threat.' But it might strike some as contradictory to profess alarm for the wellbeing of the movie business while simultaneously defunding film festivals.
'From my understanding, DOGE showed up and within a week these letters were sent out. So that doesn't seem to me like there's a lot of time put into assessing whether or not a project actually meets the goals or the priorities [of the administration],' says the Film Festival Alliance's Twist. 'It also is clarifying for Americans that the government is exercising this level of ideological control over us. This is art, right? That's the whole point of art. It's interpretive.'
The grant cancellation emails gave impacted organizations 7 calendar days to file an appeal (that window closes today). But on Monday, NEA staff reportedly began exiting the endowment, including all 10 directors in charge of overseeing grant categories.
'Now that a lot of the directors of the NEA have stepped down, who's even there to read the appeals?' questions Twist. 'There's no information about how the appeal will be judged. It's simply, 'You may appeal this determination if you believe your project meets a new priority. You email [e-mail] and provide documentation.' No, 'We'll follow up in 30 days.' Nothing.'
The Trump administration's sudden claim to want to 'elevate the Nation's HBCUs' as part of the redefined NEA mission may sound implausible given its open hostility to DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion.
'To me, the withdrawals of funding feel more capricious,' observes Twist. 'This is 'as prioritized by the president.' It aligns with the general vision that we're getting out of the White House, which is that a handful of people have a really specific idea of what they think America should look like, and they are using all the tools of power at hand to make it so.'
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