A creative project funded in large part by the Ohio Arts Council is earning awards and acclaim at screenings nationwide. Miss India Georgia by artists Daniel Friedman and Sharon Grimberg was broadcast May 26 on the PBS national television network. The hour-long documentary follows four contestants in Atlanta’s annual Miss Indian American beauty pageant. During the course of the film the women reveal the complexity of their feelings about growing up in the United States as children of immigrant parents. They have discussions with their grandparents about arranged marriages, quarrels with boyfriends and revealing conversations about their struggles to maintain a cultural identity while being accepted as normal American teenagers. Friedman’s grant was made possible through the Ohio Arts Council’s Artists Projects Program, which encourages the creation of new work by Ohio artists of all disciplines. It particularly invites artists to collaborate and build partnerships within their communities and throughout the state. All funded work must include a public component. “Without support from the OAC, we wouldn’t have been able to shoot Miss India Georgia in a format that PBS would have been willing to broadcast,” Friedman said, referring to the grant he received from the Arts Council. Friedman, a Columbus native and first-time OAC grant recipient, teaches at Antioch College. The artists say their interest in the film’s subject matter arose from their own Jewish immigrant family histories. “We don’t think of Miss India Georgia as being mainly about the Indian American experience,” Friedman said. “There are 25 million people in the Unites States who were born elsewhere and many of them are going through experiences like those shown in the film, either as parents or as children.” Earlier this year the film received awards from the Society for Visual Anthropology, the Athens International Film & Video Festival and the New England Film and Video Festival. PBS has rights to rebroadcast the documentary; a schedule is pending. For more information on the Artist Projects Program, call the Ohio Arts Council at 614/466-2613.