SPOTLIGHT ON DOCUMENTARIES

LEF New England is now welcoming applications for Pre-production and Early Development grants through the Moving Image Fund. A maximum of (6) grants of $5,000 each will be awarded to projects in the Pre-production phase, and a maximum of (6) grants of $2,500 each will be awarded to projects in the Early Development phase.

Applications for both phases require a written proposal and a full line-item budget. Pre-production applications require a current work sample of up to 10 minutes from the project being proposed for funding. Early Development applications require two past work samples, and current work samples are not accepted.

Deadline for applications is August 7th. Learn more and apply here.

THE AXS FILM FUND

The AXS Film Fund is for creators of color in documentary filmmaking or nonfiction new media who identify as living with a disability. They seek to bring visibility to creators who are oftentimes overlooked. While they ask that a person of color living with a disability is a key contributor to the project, they welcome diverse teams to apply. Five creators will be awarded with grants of up to $10,000 each to assist them in finishing their projects in any stage.

Deadline to apply is July 31st. Learn more here.

CATAPULT DEVELOPMENT GRANT

Launched in 2010, the Catapult Development Fund provides early-stage support to documentary filmmakers when funding is hardest to find. Catapult conducts an open call for applications twice a year, with decisions announced in the early spring and late fall. This year, they will offer twenty grants of up to $25,000 USD to filmmakers in development with a documentary feature or short.

Deadline to apply is July 10th. Learn more here.

SFFILM DOCUMENTARY FILM FUND

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund (DFF) supports engaging documentaries in post-production which exhibit compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an original, innovative visual approach. Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed more than $900,000 to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide.

DFF grants are awarded once each year to documentary feature projects and are open to filmmakers internationally. Individual grant amounts and the number of grants made will be determined on an annual basis. As with all SFFILM grants, in addition to the cash awards, recipients will gain access to numerous benefits through the comprehensive and dynamic SFFILM Makers artist development program.

Deadline to apply is June 30th. Learn more here.

ITVS DIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT FUND

Diversity Development Fund gives directors of color up to $35,000 in research and development funding to develop a documentary for public media. The documentary can be on any subject, viewpoint, or style as long as it is in development or pre-production.

The Diversity Development Fund is not a grant. You will receive funding in the form of a development agreement that assigns ITVS certain rights over your project during the term of the contract.

Deadline to apply is June 16th. Learn more here.

NONFICTION ACCESS INITIATIVE NONFICTION MEDIA MAKERS WITH DISABILITIES SURVEY

IDA invites you to participate in the Nonfiction Access Initiative (NAI) Nonfiction Media Makers with Disabilities Survey. The survey will identify data points about mediamakers from the disability community: where makers are in their practice, what hurdles they experience, and how best to support their work. NAI is a movement aimed at narrative change through building power, community, and increasing opportunities for nonfiction mediamakers who identify as disabled.

Complete the survey here.

LEF FOUNDATION'S MOVING IMAGE FUND GRANTEES

LEF Foundation has awarded twelve Moving Image Fund grants totaling $220,000 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers. The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in feature-length documentary films that demonstrate excellence in technique, a resonant story or idea, and originality of artistic vision and voice. The most recent round of awards includes eight grants of $15,000 to projects at the Production stage and four grants of $25,000 to projects at the Post-production stage. Grantees include the below CID sponsored films:

PRODUCTION ($15,000):

SOFTLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS (Directed by Anna Barsan, Produced by Shannon Fitzpatrick, Patrick Brăila, and Charlotte Cook)

POST-PRODUCTION ($25,000):

KAKSORI! (Directed and Produced by Shirley Kim-Ryu and Eben Portnoy)

NIGHT FIGHT (Directed by Khary Saaed Jones, Produced by Khary Saeed Jones and Kendra Taira Field)

Read the full announcement here.

I OF THE WATER WINS AT HOT DOCS

I OF THE WATER, directed by Kimberlee Bassford, has won the First Look prize of Can. $50,000 at the Hot Docs Forum. First Look prizes are financed by members of Hot Docs First Look, a curated access program for philanthropic supporters of and investors in documentary film.

I OF THE WATER focuses on acclaimed Samoan writer Sia Figiel. After a painful experience pushes Figiel into self-exile, she untangles her complicated past, revealing hidden trauma and initiating a journey toward healing. The film is produced by Bassford, Marilyn McFadyen, Vilsoni Hereniko, Leanne K. Ferrer, Cheryl Hirasa, and Linda Goldstein Knowlton.

THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY PODCAST

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences launched a six-episode podcast, THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY, hosted by 

CID sponsored filmmaker Jim LeBrecht, (co-founder of FWD-Doc.) Read more about it in Filmmaker Magazine.

PBS ACCELERATOR FELLOWSHIP FOR DIVERSE VOICES

PBS has announced the 2023 cohort for the Accelerator Fellowship for Diverse Voices. Through the program, seven mid-career content makers are hired as full-time, paid employees for a term of one-year on selected PBS nationally distributed series. CID filmmaker Jon Crawford has been hired as a multiplatform producer for ITVS and Independent Lens.

Read more about the full cohort here.

CISCO KID AT SAN FRANCISCO DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

CISCO KID, directed by Emily Kaye Allen, screened in person at San Francisco Documentary Film Festival on June 4th. The film was also available to stream through the festival's virtual program from June 1-11.

SF Doc Fest is "the beloved annual compendium of odd, unusual nonfiction films from every nook and corner of our bizarro country and beyond... SF DocFest’s programmers opt for poignant, intimate works that miss the mainstream by dint of their iconoclasm." - Michael Fox, KQED

Filmed across unfolding seasons, Eileen–a young, solitary maverick–forges a life among the discarded remnants and lingering memories of a desert ghost town in southern Utah. A queer slice of the contemporary American West, Cisco Kid is both a portrait of a person who has walked away from mainstream society, and a place that has been left behind by a changing world.

RAZING LIBERTY SQUARE PREMIERES

RAZING LIBERTY SQUARE had its world premiere at Hot Docs and its US premiere at DocLands Film Festival. The film had its NY premiere at the Human Rights Watch Festival, and will have its European premiere at Sheffield DocFest.

Miami is ground-zero for sea-level-rise. When residents of the Liberty Square public-housing community learn about a $300 million revitalization project in 2015, they know that their neighborhood is located on the highest-and-driest ground in the city. Now they must prepare to fight a new form of racial injustice - Climate Gentrification.

UNRAVELING ON CHAIFLICKS

UNRAVELING filmmaker Stacey Ravel Abarbanel’s unexpected journey to discover what really happened between her Jewish immigrant grandfather, Sam Ravel, and Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, is now streaming on ChaiFlicks, a streaming service devoted to Jewish and Israeli film and television.

Save 40% off your first year at ChaiFlicks.com with promo code UNRAVELING.

WE ARE GUARDIANS US PREMIERE

WE ARE GUARDIANS had its US premiere at the Human Rights Watch Festival and screened on June 4th and 5th in New York. The film also screened at HotDocs in May.

As the Indigenous Brazilian forest guardians of the Tenetehara fend off attacks from illegal loggers, miners, and exporters, this global story shares what happens when Indigenous rights, land stewardship, environmental science, and political corruption converge, leaving the fate of the Amazon and it’s Indigenous communities in the balance.

CINESLAM FILM FESTIVAL

The box office for the CineSLAM Film Festival is now open and films will be screening on Saturday, June 24th at 4pm at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro, VT. Learn more and buy your tickets here.

WOMAN IN THE NATION RECEIVES AWARD AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

WOMAN IN THE NATION was awarded $5,000 and third place in an Entrepreneurial Competition at Dartmouth College in May. The Dartmouth Alumni sister team of Director Gemma Lockhart and Producer Tauna Lockhart expanded their documentary to include an entrepreneurial vision with the original film, a subscriber series about the making of the film designed for Native American viewers and a streaming Indigenous dramatic series with pilot scheduled for production in 2024. About 50 ventures competed. “The entrepreneur competition was rigorous, discerning and brought discovery I never dreamed of,” Gemma reported, “combined with an uplift brought by camaraderie and the spirit of Dartmouth!” Production continues on WOMAN IN THE NATION with June being a key month for location filming of the documentary.

NARROW PATH TO HAPPINESS PREMIERES

NARROW PATH TO HAPPINESS is a feature documentary that follows a young gay Romani couple from a remote village in Hungary who have a dream so absurd that it seems impossible: to make a musical film based on their lives. Since the world premiere at Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival, where the film received a Special Jury Mention in the International Competition, the film has screened at the Pink Apple Queer Film Festival in Zurich, at Docs Barcelona, and this June it will have its North American premiere at Inside Out LGBT Film Festival in Toronto — Canada's largest 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival. In other exciting news, Marc Smolowitz and the NARROW PATH TO HAPPINESS team just closed a deal to be represented by Zurich-based First Hand Films for world sales.

CURED FEATURED AT APA ANNUAL MEETING

The co-directors of CURED, Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer, were honored to participate in two screenings and discussions of their award-winning PBS documentary during the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, which was held in May at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. During one of the sessions, the filmmakers were joined by the newly installed president of the APA, Dr. Petros Levounis, who is an out gay man; and by Dr. Fi Fonseca, a Mayo Clinic fellow who focuses on transgender medicine and reproductive psychiatry. The second session featured a Q&A with Dr. Lawrence Hartmann, who appears in CURED and was the APA’s first openly gay president in 1991–92. These sessions took place 50 years after the APA’s board of directors voted to remove the diagnosis of homosexuality from the organization's manual of mental disorders in 1973.

FILM & MEDIA MAKERS OPEN HOUSE IN CAMBRIDGE

Join CCTV & LCMedia for an evening of networking and connection at the Film & Media Makers Open House. Check out Cambridge Community Television's production facilities while building your creative community

CCTV is among the Boston area's premier community media resources, and is celebrating 35 years of being the voice and vision of Cambridge. LCMedia Productions is a Boston-based Peabody Award-winning independent media production company.

Meet professionals in arts & media & connect with other storytellers. Join them at 38 Massachusetts Avenue Central Square Cambridge on Thursday, June 15th 6-8PM. Register here.