Grad student honored for filmmaking talent

Meredith Lackey’s recent film, “Shwebonta,” will screen at the New York Film Festival next month.

Meredith Lackey, a filmmaker and graduate student who is “as much ethnographer, anthropologist and theorist as she is artist” was honored for her work by the Princess Grace Foundation-USA.

“She is a smart filmmaker,” said Jennifer Reeder, associate professor of moving image.

Lackey, who is completing a master of fine arts degree, received a film honoraria from the foundation. She describes her films as exploring “global networks — elements like contemporary finance, data centers, and fiber optic cables.”

“I’m fascinated by contemporary experience and feel a strong desire to parse that,” she said.

Her recent film “Shwebonta” will be screened at the New York Film Festival in October. It portrays Burma’s (Myanmar) transition from isolation and military rule to global trade. The film was named for a street in Yangon “where sign board builders construct advertisements for the city by hand,” she said.

For her thesis, Lackey is making a film that traces the path of a proposed transatlantic fiber optic cable from South America to Africa.

Lackey received a UIC University Fellowship during the first year of her MFA program and a UIC Chancellor’s Award for “Shwebonta.”

The New York-based Princess Grace Foundation-USA supports emerging artists in film, theater and dance through annual awards, honoraria, scholarships and fellowships.