September 2019 Newsletter
Center For
Independent
Documentary
2019 KOPKIND/CID FILM CAMP
A note from Susi Walsh, Executive Director of CID:

Ten filmmakers: they came to the farm from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, New
York and around New England. They brought with them their films in progress; the stories they
are wrestling with, their questions about craft and completion and reaching audiences. And for
our 14th summer, we gave them GREAT food, a room with a view, a kite (!) and the opportunity
to do a deep dive into their films, new friends and the local watering holes. A week of radical
relaxation, deep conversations - the Kopkind/CID film seminars! Want to join us next year? Our
call for filmmakers will go out in April 2020 for our 15th annual camp. Read about this year’s
“crop” HERE .
Industry News & Opportunities
ITVS DIVERSITY DEVELOPMENT FUND
Diversity Development Fund gives producers of color up to $25,000 in research and development funding so you can develop your documentary for public media. Pre-production nonfiction projects only. Around five percent of applicants receive funding. For works in progress, see  Open Call . On average, applicants spend 1-2 weeks completing their applications.

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. 

Applications are due Friday, September 13th at 11:59 PDT. Learn more and apply.
CAMDEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL & POINTS NORTH FORUM
Mark your calendar for the 15th Camden International Film Festival and Points North Forum, taking place from September 12th - 15th in Camden, Rockland and Rockport, Maine .

CID Film News & Updates
DAWNLAND NOMINATED FOR TWO EMMY® AWARDS
The Upstander Project team is honored to announce that DAWNLAND has been nominated for two Emmy® awards for Outstanding Research and Outstanding Music. The winners will be announced in New York City on September 24th and a screening of Dawnland is planned there for September 25th . Stay tuned for details at  dawnland.org .

We are also thrilled to announce the world premiere of DEAR GEORGINA at the Camden International Film Festival on September 14th . In the short film, a Passamaquoddy elder journeys into an unclear past to better understand herself and her cultural heritage. DEAR GEORGINA is a sequel to DAWNLAND. Learn more at  upstanderproject.org/georgina
WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN & SCREENINGS
The award-winning documentary WBCN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION needs your help. The film is currently raising donations through a crowdfunding campaign on Seed&Spark ( SeeTheFilm.com ) to help pay for the additional music rights in order to get the film out widely through theaters, libraries, schools, and home video. With every donation of $104 or more, you are also invited to join as a guest at the upcoming fundraiser, which includes a special screening of the film and after-party on December 4th in the Fenway area of Boston. The after-party will feature WBCN announcers and staff, as well as the James Montgomery Band and other special musical guests. Those attending include: Charles Laquidara, MC Charles Daniels, Bill Lichtenstein, Al Perry, Joe Rogers, Tommy Hadges, Debbie Ullman, and more listed on the  SeeTheFilm.com  page. 

The film will also be screening at the 2019 Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, where it will be shown as the "Showcase Film" including a special reception and panel on September 14th . It has also been invited for a special showing at The Carter Center in Atlanta, GA on September 19th .
5 BLOCKS WORLD PREMIERE IN SAN FRANCISCO
5 BLOCKS , a documentary about a San Francisco neighborhood undergoing change, will have its world premiere at the San Francisco Green Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 29 . San Francisco's Market Street was once the grandest boulevard in America. No stranger to civic celebrations since the 1900s and just minutes from City Hall, the area fell into decline and became home to the city's poorest population. The neighborhood is currently undergoing its most dramatic change in 50 years as tech companies, their employees, and the restaurants and stores that cater to them confront the realities of a neighborhood that still houses some of the city’s most marginalized residents.  5 Blocks  explores the complex questions of income disparity, changing demographics, and the very nature of place.
THE SONGPOET WORLD PREMIERE
"What makes the film stand shoulders above its biopic peers is both its richly crafted cinematic
beauty and its philosophical insistence on the artist as a being formed in the crucible of
relationships." – Augusta Palmer, filmmaker

THE SONGPOET , Paul Lamont and Scott Sackett’s intimate, cinematic portrait of singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, premieres September 13, opening night at this year’s Music Film Festival in Copenhagen .

The Songpoet follows Andersen’s artistic journey of more than 50 years from the 1960s Greenwich
Village scene to his home outside Amsterdam where he’s writing today. The story unfolds
through Andersen’s deeply personal songs, recorded readings from decades of journals, rare
home movies, and interviews featuring Clive Davis, Lenny Kaye, John Sebastian, Tom Paxton,
Willie Nile and a host of others. Festival audiences can also see The Songpoet on December 3 at
BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels . Funding provided in part by the Tramuto Foundation. See the trailer here.
LEF FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANT TO INHERITED
The LEF Foundation recently announced 6 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $30,000 in support for New England-based independent documentary filmmakers.

A pre-production grant in the amount of $5,000 was awarded to  INHERITED , directed by Jessie Beers-Altman.  INHERITED  is a personal documentary that seeks to reconcile the life and legacy of the filmmaker's artist father, Harold Altman. When Altman died in 2003, he left behind an estate consisting of more than 200,000 pieces of artwork. Now, 15 years later, his daughter is faced with the task of figuring out what to do with it all. Part-historical, part-personal, the film follows her as she time-travels through 80 years of her father's complicated, celebrated, and tumultuous life in an attempt to reconcile the man he was with the legacy he left behind.

Read the full announcement which includes all grantees  here .
HIGHER 15 WINS BEST PITCH AT 2019 BLACKSTAR FILM FESTIVAL
HIGHER 15 was one of eight films selected to participate in the first annual Pitch Session at the BlackStar Film Festival . Filmmakers pitched their works-in-progress to a distinguished panel of funders and executives, and we are happy to announce that HIGHER 15 won Best Pitch!

To learn more about HIGHER 15 , please visit www.higher15.com and https://www.documentaries.org/higher-15
PATERNAL RITES SCREENING AT ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES IN NYC
PATERNAL RITES will return to NYC for another screening on Saturday, September 21 at 6pm at Anthology Film Archives . Director Jules Rosskam will be in attendance for a Q&A.

Paternal Rites examines the secret underbelly of a contemporary Jewish-American family as the filmmaker grapples with the after-effects of childhood physical and sexual abuse in his present-day life and in the lives of his family members. Interrogating the nature of emotional upheaval and memory itself, the film reflects on the ways in which trauma encrypts in uncanny ways, the function of speech and narrative in the process of decryption, and the role of film and filmmaking in the practice of healing.

Find more details about the screening here .
ADAM'S APPLE AT IFP FILM WEEK
ADAM'S APPLE is a divergent coming-of-age documentary from the perspectives of Director Amy Jenkins and her teenage transgender son. The film will be a “Spotlight on Documentary” film at IFP Film Week , September 15-19 . Amy is looking forward to meeting with potential funders!

Her short film, Wishes, will premiere at Camden International Film Festival in Maine, the second week of September .
FROM BAGHDAD TO THE BAY SCREENING IN BAY AREA
FROM BAGHDAD TO THE BAY will be screening twice in the Bay Area this month:

Thursday, 9/12 at 6:30pm Tiburon Film Society
Wednesday, 9/25 at 6:15pm -   Oakland International Film Festival

From Baghdad To The Bay  is a documentary that follows the journey of an Iraqi refugee and former translator for the US military. Wrongfully accused of being a double agent, tortured by the U.S., and ostracized from his family and country, Ghazwan Alsharif struggles to rebuild his life in the United States while coming out as an openly gay man.
WE WANT THE AIRWAVES NEW WEBSITE
WE WANT THE AIRWAVES  follows a trio of first time TV makers as they fight to get a first of it’s kind documentary based social justice television series (entitled  Manifesto!)  on the air. A first amendment documentary, the film focuses on the need for a citizen’s platform on broadcast television.

We Want the Airwaves has a new  website ! The team has also been working diligently on getting important sequences of the film animated; as soon as these are complete, the film will enter it’s final stages of post (in November of this year). 
COHIBERNATION TO SCREEN AT CINEMA DIVERSE FESTIVAL
COHIBERNATION will screen as part of the Cinema Diverse: The Palm Springs LGBTQ Film Festival in September 22nd at 3 PM in Palm Springs. Cohibernation  is a documentation of long term gay male bear relationships, concentrating on 7 couples of varying age, ethnicity and length of relationship from 10 – 26 years.

Visit the film's website here to learn more.
YOUTH AND GENDER MEDIA PROJECT AROUND THE COUNTRY
Filmmaker and educator Jonathan Skurnik continues to screen his YOUTH AND GENDER MEDIA PROJECT films around the country and provide professional development for communities learning to be more inclusive of trans and non-binary youth. This fall, he visits Valley Beth Shalom day school in the San Fernando Valley and the Hamlin School in the Bay Area, and he is finalizing dates with American and Yale Universities. Jonathan continues to be impressed and moved by institutions looking to change their policies, cultures and minds around gender, in order to provide all young people with love and respect, regardless of their gender expressions or identities.
TEAM JACK UPDATE
A note from Chris Walker, the producer of TEAM JACK (film title TBD) :

Our original mission remains the same and that is to have a presence at the Sundance Film Festival which begins on January 23rd, 2020 and a distributor in place soon thereafter. Applications are due in early September so the push is on. We have worked with a variety of high-profile film distributors over the past few years with our other films and each of them will be presented with the final cut as well. 
70% of our interviews are complete. The interviews that we have completed and the ones currently on the calendar include a wide array of interview subjects from family and friends, to addiction specialists, authors, doctors, alternative activists, celebrities as well as prominent politicians leading the charge in this battle.

60% of the rough-cut edit is complete.The   soundtrack is coming together with a few tracks performed by Will Conroy, Jack’s brother. In addition, our music composer has created several custom tracks and we are moving forward with licensing a few more. 

We are currently interviewing high profile PR firms to represent the film and to help get the word out, which will eventually help build the film’s energy - especially during the upcoming 2020 election cycle where this topic will be widely discussed. 

Please visit our emerging social media platforms to learn more about the film.  Facebook:  Dear Jack-A love letter   Instagram:  Jacksloveletter   Website:  https://www.dearjack.love/behind-the-scenes/
CID Sponsored Film Of The Month
"HIGHER 15"
Directed by Ameha Molla

HIGHER 15 is the story of Kiflu Ketema, a former Ethiopian revolutionary, turned lead witness in an FBI investigation against his murderous prison guard in war torn Addis Ababa. This deeply personal film intimately captures Kiflu’s remarkable story - from idealist revolutionary conspiring against a brutal regime, to indefinitely imprisoned and tortured inmate, to escaped prisoner and smuggled refugee, to forced migrant and United States citizen. Far from his past in Ethiopia, Kiflu settled in to a new life in the suburbs of Denver, working at the US postal service and raising a family – until a phone call sends him to a local cafe and brings him face to face with the prison guard who tortured him, and others, decades earlier. As the first and only film to document an Ethiopian refugee’s collaboration with the FBI to convict a war criminal, HIGHER 15 presents a stunning portrait of a determined refugee and his relentless hunt for justice for those who suffered torture, rape, and death during Ethiopia’s Red Terror.

Read more and contribute to the film here.
Featured Resource Of The Month
"A Massive List of Fall 2019 Grants All Filmmakers Should Know About"
No Film School has released their extensive Fall 2019 grant list. The opportunities are organized by deadline and category.

Check out the full list here .
We are grateful for the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency which is funded by the Mass Cultural Council, and administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.
Center For Independent Documentary | 1-339-364-1278 | www.documentaries.org