With the help of Juan Espinosa at Clearshot Design Solutions, and with database support from Cherry Yang and Chantal Sousa of AirOps Consulting, we've revamped the LEF website to give you better access to information about the Moving Image Fund, LEF's fellowship partnerships, latest news, our past grants directory, filmmaker opportunities, and more.

SheridanWorks is offering filmmaking courses to filmmakers at any level over the age of 18. Courses include workshops in Camera and Sound (6 sessions starting 1/29) and Storytelling (6 sessions starting 2/28), Filmmaking Fundamentals (10 sessions starting 3/1), and ongoing one-to-one mentorship.

Brown Girls Doc Mafia is seeking a Senior Communications Officer to use their passion for social media, writing, graphic design, marketing, PR, and creating original content to help BGDM advance their long-standing goals of visibility, growth, and power for BIPOC women and non-binary film professionals of color.

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture is currently accepting applications for the Opportunity Fund grants, prioritizing communities that have been most impacted by COVID-19. The Opportunity Fund is a grant for individual artists to help continue their professional development, support their artistic career, share their art, and teach others. There are two categories artists can apply for: Artist Career Development ($5,000) or Community Arts Experiences ($10,000).

The TV5MONDE Maine Heritage Film Grant is a $15,000 grant supporting the production of a documentary short filmed in Maine and to premiere at the Camden International Film Festival. Preference is given to projects highlighting Francophone culture in Maine and/or French-speaking populations, but all Maine heritage-focused projects will be considered.

The Loop Lab, a BIPOC-led nonprofit social enterprise specializing in media arts internships and digital storytelling, is hiring four new full-time positions: Senior Instructor, Instructor, Production Manager, and Administrative Manager. The mission of the Loop Lab is to empower Womxn and People of Color in the media arts to develop careers in audio/video through job training and job placement.

The National Endowment for the Arts is accepting applications for grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 through the Grants for Artists Projects program. Through project-based funding, the program supports public engagement with, and access to, various forms of art across the nation, the creation of art, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life. In the Media Arts category, priorities include support for advancing traditional or expanded forms of storytelling, visual expression, and performance using film, cinema, audio, broadcast, new media, creative code, and related formats at the intersection of arts and technology.

MacDowell provides time, space, and an inspiring environment to over 300 artists of exceptional talent each year. A MacDowell Fellowship, or residency, consists of exclusive use of a studio, accommodations, and three prepared meals a day for up to six weeks at its location in Peterborough, NH. MacDowell encourages artists from all backgrounds and all countries in the following disciplines: architecture, film/video arts, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theatre, and visual arts. There are no residency fees. Travel grants as well as need-based stipends are available. Reference letters are also no longer required for this round.

Presented by the Video Consortium and supported by the Google News Initiative, the R.E.S.T. Summit (Resilience, Emotional and Digital Security, Trauma) is a collaborative week-long virtual symposium that explores the nature of resilience, safety, and trauma for those working in video journalism and documentary film. The summit will take place Monday, March 21 through Friday, March 25, 2022.

Osmosis Films is looking to collaborate with documentary filmmakers and producers on creative development, production services, further financing, and the distribution of projects in development or early stages of production. In 2022, they will set aside up to $100,000 to be distributed across 2-3 selected projects that feature artist-led stories with a strong creative vision, character-driven documentaries with access to rarely seen worlds, and approaches in non-traditional storytelling with a strong point of view. Osmosis is open to features, docuseries, and projects that challenge form.

Earlier this month, former Director of IDA Funds and Enterprise Program Poh Si Teng published A Call to All Documentary Filmmakers in IDA's Documentary magazine. In the feature essay, Poh reflects on her own shift from "journalist and independent filmmaker to commissioner and gatekeeper," the latter term being one that she has reluctantly embraced out of duty to the communities she serves--and of which she is a part--through funding. Poh urges those in similar positions of power to consider their methods for enacting change: Are they festooned with calculated signaling, or are they transparent and honest? Are they short-term and necessary, or long-term and dawdling? Are the insular, or are they collectively minded?

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences put out a report, Art is Work: Policies to Support Creative Workers, which addresses the question: "How can we better recognize the value of artists in our national policy in order to enable the essential work they do?" A product of the Commission on the Arts, the report has been a multi-year, widely researched project that concluded with recommendations to name and include artists in federal policy, recognize how creative work happens, center equity, and think locally while sharing nationally. The report makes for valuable reading as we all contemplate what the future will require to build better artist support structures and systems at the federal, state, and local level.