Past Recipients of the Magnifying Glass Micro-Grant

FIRST is a portrait of Dolfinette Martin, a formerly incarcerated mother of five children and a community organizer in New Orleans, Louisiana.  

After Claudetteia centers on life for queer students and teachers in the Monroe City School system after openly queer student Claudetteia Love made nationwide headlines in 2015 for challenging a discriminatory school policy that barred her from wearing a tuxedo to prom.  

For the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the summer of 2016 has ushered in a season of police brutality, retaliation, and ultimately, a thousand year flood that left over 20,000 people displaced in southern Louisiana.  

“No Choice” is a short documentary film that focuses on Benjamin and Alba Calle, two middle-aged Colombian immigrants living and working in Greenville, South Carolina. Using a vérité approach, the film will follow their typical work day as they remark on their complex political views.  

The state of Georgia has no hate crime law, providing no way to track violent crimes against members of the LGBTQ community, no appropriate punishment, and leaving many victims without a path to closure. No Safe Space is a video and resource documenting LGBTQ violence in Georgia.  

This documentary looks at Big House Books, a non-profit volunteer organization that sends free books by request to prisoners in Mississippi correctional facilities to promote literacy and be a vehicle of change for prison reform in Mississippi.  

We Will Not Go Away documents a father and son as they face the everyday challenges of being homeless in the prosperous college football town of Oxford, Mississippi.  

A day in the life of a Memphis MATA rider as they navigate their way through the city of Memphis.  

"Senescence Lost" takes a gripping, graphic and in depth look into the horrors of elder abuse in Shelby and neighboring counties.  

Following a brutal French Quarter attack that made national headlines, community leaders talk about the causes of NOLA's crime.  

Through a series of letters about a murdered teenage boy in New Orleans, this film asks why black lives matter so little in the Deep South.  

The Arrest is about a young woman’s encounter with the New Orleans criminal justice system.