Firelight Media's The Spark Fund offers support to established independent documentary filmmakers who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color, and whose work on humanities-themed projects was disrupted by the COVID-19 public health emergency. This one-time opportunity, which is underwritten by the National Endowment for the Humanities, will provide stipends rather than project support to selected filmmakers. The Spark Fund will provide 36 stipends of $50,000 to selected filmmakers over the period of one year.

Applications are due December 29th. Learn more here.

Sundance Institute is piloting direct individual support through the Humanities Sustainability Fellowship, with funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the American Rescue Plan. The Fellowship will be open to individuals at all phases of their careers producing and/or directing humanities-focused feature-length documentary films, nonfiction audio/podcast projects, and nonfiction emerging media. Selected media makers will receive monthly stipends of $5,000 per month over the course of 12 months. Grantees will be paired with paid humanities advisors to support them throughout the year.

Applications are due December 1st. Learn more here.

Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the ITVS Humanities Documentary Development Fellowship will help pandemic-affected independent documentary filmmakers develop high-potential projects that increase the diversity, urgency, and relevance of the nation's humanities centered documentary pipeline. Support will be awarded in the form of 12 month stipends to a diverse cohort of independent documentary filmmakers at all stages of their careers, as well as advisors working in the humanities who will provide input and counsel.

Applications are due December 1st. Learn more here.

Osmosis Films is seeking submissions from filmmakers and producers for documentaries and

documentary series in the development or early stages of production. In collaboration with filmmakers, they will assist in creative development, provide production services, and take projects to market to secure further financing and distribution. In 2022, they will commit up to $100,000 to be invested across 2-3 projects they select.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until Feb. 28th. To submit, complete a brief questionnaire here.

ASCENSION, directed by Jessica Kingdon and produced by Jessica Kingdon, Kira Simon-Kennedy and Nathan Truesdell, has been nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards including Best Documentary Feature and Best Director. The film has also been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2021 Gotham Awards.

Ascension has also made the 2021 DOC NYC Short List, and the IDA Documentary Awards Short List for Best Feature.

In November, the film will be playing at the Denver Film Festival and the Sydney Film Festival, and will be opening in theaters in the Bay Area on November 12th.

ASCENSION is an impressionistic portrait of China's industrial supply chain that reveals the country's growing class divide through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth.

The nonprofit Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program (DFP) announced its latest cohort of 20 nonfiction films receiving Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grants. Grantees include the CID sponsored film UNTITLED PRISON HUNGER STRIKE FILM, directed and produced by Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz.

Untitled Prison Hunger Strike Film is a feature documentary about the rise and fall of California's system of indefinite solitary confinement.

A DECENT HOME, directed by Sara Terry and produced by Alysa Nahmias, Sara Terry and Sara Archambault, will be screening at DOC NYC on November 16th and 17th.

A Decent Home addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through the lives of mobile home park residents who can't afford housing anywhere else. They are fighting for their their dreams - and their lives - as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks, making sky-high returns on their investments while squeezing every last penny out of the mobile home owners who must pay rent for the land they live on.

Tickets available for in-person and virtual screenings here.

CURED a film by Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer about a pivotal turning point in the movement for LGBTQ equality, has won a number of accolades in recent weeks. The American Historical Association announced in October that Cured is the recipient of its 2021 John E. O’Connor Film Award, which recognizes outstanding interpretations of history through the medium of film or video. Cured also won the 2021 Jonathan Daniels Award, which is given to filmmakers "who use the transformative power of film to tell stories of hope, redemption and justice." This award was established to honor the memory of Jonathan Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian who was murdered in 1965 during a voting rights campaign in Alabama. Cured has been nominated for the BUZZIE Awards, which recognize outstanding science and history programming, and was recently featured on Good Morning America and NBC News as well as in The Advocate, Psychology Today, and LGBTQ Nation. The film will be streaming on pbs.org and the PBS video app through November 30.

WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION will air nationally on the PBS World Channel on Friday November 19th at 8:00 pm ET. See listings for local broadcast information and other dates and times.

The film will also air on major PBS stations including WGBH, WNET, WTTW, KCET, KQED and others. Click here for local dates and times.

The companion book to the film will be released by MIT Press/Penguin Random House on November 30. Available online here.

Join WBCN's Charles Laquidara, Debbie Ullman, Eric Jackson, filmmaker Bill Lichtenstein and moderator Henry Santoro for a live, virtual online discussion about the film, book and WBCN, hosted by WGBH on Wednesday, November 3 at 7:00 pm. Click here for free registration.

UNRAVELING, a film by Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, had its world premiere at DOC LA - Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival. The film took home the award for Best Mid Length Documentary. An article about the film was published in The Jewish Forward.

You are invited to the live World Premiere of Upstander Project's new film, BOUNTY. Bounty is a filmic testimony of the immeasurable resistance and survivance of Indigenous Peoples. The film is the cornerstone of a media ecosystem, which invites us all to face stories of the incalculable loss and unacknowledged trauma carried by Indigenous People for centuries.

This special event will take place on Wednesday, November 10th (7p ET / 6p CT / 5p MT / 4p PT) and is filling up quickly. Register now to attend.

After watching Bounty, join the filmmakers for a conversation with Penobscot Nation Tribal Ambassador Maulian Dana, Dawn Neptune Adams (Penobscot), and Adam Mazo, and Upstander Project learning director Mishy Lesser. Thank you to event co-sponsors Portland Press Herald and Maine Historical Society.

Learn more and watch the trailer at upstanderproject.org/bounty.

Patchworks Films' LOS HERMANOS/THE BROTHERS continues its PBS run. This month the film will also screen in theaters at the UNAFF and Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Last month it was awarded Best Documentary at the Arlington International Film Festival.

WHAT YOU'LL REMEMBER produced by Patchworks' Marcia Jarmel (directed by Erika Cohn), will screen as part of DocStories online, and DOC NYC Short List: Shorts.

OCEANIA, directed by Natalie Zimmerman and produced by Godfrey Reggio and Sara Dosa, will be one of eight US documentaries in production/post-production presented at the JI.HLAVA New Visions Forum. CID sponsored films CREDIBLE FEAR, directed by Gabrielle Ewing and produced by Kimberly McFarland, and DESIRE LINES, directed and produced by Jules Rosskam are included amongst the Projects in Development.

JI.HLAVA New Visions 2021 is a financing, co-production and networking event dedicated to supporting documentary production in its diversity and creativity.The Forum is a platform which will connect U.S. documentary filmmakers with potential co-producers, distributors, sales representatives and film festivals from Europe. Selected U.S. documentary projects in all stages of production will be presented by the director-producer pair along with a preview of the upcoming film.

THE ALL-AMERICAN CUBAN COMET, on which Gaspar González served as director and executive producer, last month won two medals from the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards —a Gold Medal for Sports Documentary and a Silver Medal for Biography. Made in collaboration with ESPN Films, The All-American Cuban Comet premiered in October 2020 on the SEC Network as part of the SEC Storied series. 

Gaspar’s latest film, the short doc A Date, with History — chronicling the arrest of a Black woman and a white man at a Miami motel in 1955 — will premiere at Miami Film Festival GEMS (November 4-10) and also screen at CineOdyssey Film Festival (Charlotte; Nov 18-20), TIDE Film Festival (Brooklyn; Nov 19-21), and Utopia Film Festival (Greenbelt, MD; Nov 20-21).

After five years of work, filmmaker Alex Leff and his team are completing CYCLE OF MEMORY - a feature documentary chronicling Alex and his sibling's adventure to find the memories their grandfather lost to Alzheimer's. You can watch the trailer and sign up for their mailing list on their new website.

Cycle of Memory explores the importance of intergenerational connection, healing painful pasts, and leaving a meaningful time capsule for the future.

Ken Paul Rosenthal has completed fourteen camera interviews with a variety of writers, publishers, and activists for his in-progress documentary JULIA VINOGRAD: BETWEEN SPIRIT & STONE. His final interview with New York City poet laureate, Alicia Ostriker, will take place in December. Ken discussed his film on the podcast, Art Heals All Wounds. Listen to the interview, here.

On Thursday, November 11, SPACE TORAH, the story of the astronaut who read from Torah while orbiting the earth on the Space Shuttle will be screened in the Mugar Omni Theater of the Boston Museum of Science. This event is in collaboration with the Boston Jewish Film Festival. The screening will be followed by a panel featuring director Rob Cooper of Verissima Productions and NASA astronaut Dr. Jeff Hoffman, and moderated by Paula S. Apsell, former senior executive producer for NOVA.  

Space Torah has been selected for 31 film festivals in 10 countries and won awards for Audience Choice (Atlanta) and  Best Documentary Short (Ann Arbor and San Diego Joyce Forum film festival) .

THIS IS JESSICA, a film by Andrea Meyerson, has taken home the Festival Favorites Award and the Director's Choice Award from the Cinema Diverse Film Festival in Palm Springs. The film also took home the Best Documentary Director Award from the Long Beach QFilm Festival.

This Is Jessica is about Jessica Bair, longtime LGBTQIA+ rights advocate with the Human Rights Campaign, as she shares her struggle to remain in her Mormon faith despite coming out as transgender.

David Schendel's THE COMEDY CLUB will open on November 1st on multiple Cable On Demand and streaming platforms, and will include a limited theatrical release in NYC at Film Noir Cinema in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. When a fire destroys Cobb's Comedy Club in San Francisco, defiant owner Tom Sawyer and his crew of comedians rebuild it, hoping to revive the struggling local comedy scene. As a breeding ground for young comedians, Cobb's could not be equaled. Jim Carrey, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone, Bob Saget, Ellen DeGeneres, Bobcat Goldthwait, Bill Maher, Kevin Pollak and more developed at this small club. David C. Schendel (Yank Tanks, 2003) documents the roller coaster ride to re-open the legendary independent venue and keep it open against all odds.

After three years and four wondrous trips to Cusco, MAMA IRENE - HEALER OF THE ANDES, is in its final stages of post production. Co-directed by Bettina Erhardt and Elisabeth Mohmann, Mama Irene is the story of a remarkable 84 year old woman Shaman (healer) from Peru who draws upon indigenous knowledge and traditions in danger of being lost forever. This film is not only a vital document of endangered wisdom; it is also a story about Woman empowerment and a testament to living harmoniously with Mother Earth. William Hurt, actor, calls the film a "proudly sensitive and courageous work."

An Austrian producer, Peter Janacek, who has worked on over 25 documentary films and produced six feature documentaries one of which - Moments of Resistance, premiered at the Viennale 2019 and has won Austrian competition of This Human World Film Festival in Vienna - has joined the team of DISCOVERING KAROL RATHAUS as a co-producer.

An opera theater in German town Osnabrück included in their 2021-2022 season Karol Rathaus’ opera Fremde Erde (Alien Soil) about exploitation of immigrant laborers. It premiered on October 2nd.

Mitch Teplitsky's RETURN TO THE ANDES will screen (virtually) at The Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale on November 12th.

Filmmaker David Wells is looking for feedback on a short film, a work in progress. It is a 9 minute, slightly experimental film that is part travel film, part cultural narrative, without a formal narrative structure. He would welcome any feedback (what works, what does not work, does the introduction help, etc.?) The film is available to watch here and the password is "Feedback". He is thankful for any input you might offer.

Check out the resources here.