LATEST NEWS

Since Impact Kickstart's creation six years ago, we have had the privilege of supporting underrepresented filmmakers in developing impact campaigns that address some of the most critical issues of our time. We're thrilled by what's recently unfolded for some of our past grantees! Following a BlackStar Film Festival win for Best Feature Documentary in August, Fire Through Dry Grass' Vince Pierce (Musician, Impact Strategist, Reality Poet), was celebrated on Good Morning America and awarded $1 million for his organization Open Doors. Fire Through Dry Grass offers a rare look inside a New York City nursing home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fire Through Dry Grass is also a New York Times Critics Pick! Continuing with the good news, HBO Documentary Films has acquired U.S. and Canada television and streaming rights to Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance, Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary at Black Star Film Festival, and Jury Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature at Frameline Film Festival. The film directed and produced by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson examines the life and career of poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, who rose to fame in the 1960s through her writings and television appearances. The Storming Caesar's Palace impact campaign is well underway! More than 50 screenings have taken place since the film opened the BlackStar Film Festival in 2022, where director Hazel Gurland was awarded the Shine First Time Filmmaker Award. From the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, to the Care Workers Can’t Wait Summit, The BIG (Basic Income Guarantee) Conference, to the Black Maternal Mental Health Summit - the film has been lifting up and celebrating Black Women's work while fortifying the efforts of today's grassroots leaders and creating opportunities for dialogue and action with organizations and legislators to build solutions to poverty from the ground up. Last and certainly not least, Leya Hale, Bring Her Home (Director/Producer) was featured as part of the 2023 Film North Forum panel, Staying Put: Building a Film Practice Wherever You Are, focused on building a filmmaking practice and community outside of the big media hubs and challenging established models of what it takes to succeed in a documentary career. We will continue to highlight the incredible work of all our Impact Kickstart alumni, so stay tuned to our newsletter, blog, and social media channels: @workingfilms. The 2023 Impact Kickstart annual call for applications closed in early September, and announcements will be made in November.  

Beyond Walls breaks down barriers in its most recent screening event at the Mayday Space in New York City

  This summer, Working Films is launching our organizing initiative Beyond Walls. In partnership with the Center for Political Education, Critical Resistance, MPD150, and Survived + Punished, this project helps us reimagine better alternatives to policing and prisons through the power of storytelling. Beyond Walls features documentary films that help define and amplify what abolition of the prison industrial complex* looks like. As part of our initiative, we are touring these films with organizations that are directly impacted by and leading the change toward prison abolition. In our most recent event on June 29th, community members and organizers gathered at the Mayday Space, in Bushwick, NY. Mayday Space is known as a hub for movement leaders to work, learn, celebrate and build together. The event was a powerful demonstration of space, story and solidarity coming together. The featured films highlight the social and political realities of incarcerated people and how maintaining connection beyond walls can be a form of resistance against the carceral system. After the screening, attendees broke into small group discussions and then took part in a letter-writing workshop with Black & Pink’s NYC Chapter. Black & Pink is a nonprofit dedicated to the liberation of LGBTQIA2S+ people and those living with HIV/AIDS who have been affected by the criminal punishment system. In their PenPal program, Black & Pink provides a platform for incarcerated and non-incarcerated people to forge relationships as a means of support building and harm reduction. The workshop was an opportunity for guests to connect with LGBTQIA2S+ individuals who are currently incarcerated.

“Because they had just watched the films, [event] participants were very thoughtful and intentional with their cards,” said Bran, a Black & Pink NYC organizer, in regard to the event’s letter-writing activity.

Overall, attendees were able to further understand the realities of incarcerated individuals and gain a new perspective on what justice can look like.

“[It’s important to] have community members watch community-led movies,” said Ienna Fernandez, the programs manager at the Mayday Space.

The Mayday Space hosts events in collaboration with grassroots organizations and individual activists. This event allowed people from different industries and regions to connect and share new ways of organizing. Tanya Nguyen, an organizer at Black & Pink NYC, emphasized how events like this have the power to “re-energize people and remind them of the human faces behind the work that we do.” Beyond Walls is part of Working Films’ “Docs in Action” program. Docs in Action provides funding and distribution to short documentaries that explore topics of social and environmental justice. Working Films takes a collaborative approach when working with host organizations to curate screening events. Our goal is to help them facilitate activities and discussions that best align with the values of their community and their organization. With the films as a catalyst, the screenings allow time to inform, plan and take action toward a better future. * The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

---

Upcoming screenings for Beyond Walls can be found here. If you are interested in hosting a screening for Beyond Walls, fill out the request formhere.

Imani Russell writes about the intersection of social life and social issues, and works to reimagine new avenues towards social justice. This work can be done in many ways, but they’d like to start with a story. ___ Being in control of your own life is a human right. However, for incarcerated individuals, control is often the first thing they are stripped of while in prison, leaving them especially vulnerable to outside media makers mining their lives for content. Unfiltered stories from incarcerated people are under-told and under-valued. This is just one of many consequences of a carceral system that often dehumanizes individuals by breaking down their means of connection. Understanding how this happens and learning new ways to counter these harmful practices will help put power back in the hands of people in prison. The prison system favors external filmmakers and journalists coming in and capturing incarcerated stories rather than giving imprisoned people the means to document and share their own experiences. “[Outside media makers and journalists] are committed to the work of journalism or the work of telling stories to certain audiences, to the industry, and [to] selling stories and certain ideas,” said Adamu Chan, a board member at Working Films and the Director and Producer of What These Walls Won’t Hold, a short documentary that explores the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on California prisons, and how relationships built on trust and shared experiences can be a roadmap to radical change. As someone who was previously incarcerated, Chan spoke about the prison filmmaking landscape and the inherent power differences that arise when non-incarcerated people come in to film someone else’s story. “Usually, people sharing the story don’t benefit at all, and in a lot of ways, are harmfully impacted by narratives put out there by folks…It was something important for me that, as a filmmaker, [I recognize that] I had the most to gain, and people’s stories I was telling had the most to lose,” Chan emphasized. Incarcerated participants in these projects are usually not compensated for their time, and they may be at risk for longer sentencing, parole issues and other adverse effects at the mercy of the filmmaker. Even though so much harm is being done to these incarcerated participants, there is still a stigma that allowing imprisoned people to tell their own stories will compromise the “integrity” of the project. The film industry often overcompensates for how necessary an “outside” perspective on the carceral system actually is. A deep understanding of one’s own experiences is often mistaken for bias. “There is no objectivity,” Chan stressed. “Everyone comes in with their own biases, and the people that are closest to the subject or issue are the ones telling a truth that people aren’t privy to.” The outsourcing and warping of incarcerated people’s experiences is part of a larger system of dehumanization that surrounds every aspect of incarcerated life. This dehumanization often manifests by stifling avenues of connection. Prisons are usually built in rural areas, despite many of the people inside coming from urban regions, making traveling for visitation difficult. Time constraints are often put on phone and video calls, and having to pay to send and receive letters–a process that has recently shifted to fully virtual in many prisons–is extremely restrictive. “I think that at the base of what, to me, feels like the most violent aspect of incarceration is the separation…the breaking down of communities and relationships and [the] isolation of people from their families and loved ones,” Chan said. Even though there are still so many barriers to connection for incarcerated individuals, many organizations are working to bridge the widening gap that the carceral system has set in place. Organizations like Black & Pink, Critical Resistance and Survived and Punished use letter-writing programs to connect incarcerated and non-incarcerated people. The latter two also work directly with members on the inside and formerly imprisoned people as part of their advocacy and political work. Initiatives such as The Visiting Room, the Prison Journalism Project, Represent Justice and Working Films’ Beyond Walls work to capture the unfiltered and authentic stories of people currently or previously imprisoned. Working Films’ Beyond Walls organizing initiative aims to redefine and amplify what abolition of the prison industrial complex* can look like. They are currently touring a documentary compilation centered around the role that connection plays in resistance to this system. One of the films in the compilation is Calls From Home by Sylvia Ryberson, who uses animation and voice-overs to overcome the invisibility of life inside and the distance that causes. What These Walls Won’t Hold by Adamu Chan is also featured in the compilation, which captures both the lightest and the darkest moments of incarceration, while emphasizing how the most profound experiences exist in the gray. When it comes to film, Chan spoke about the importance of seeing incarcerated people not only as subjects, but as audience members too, and creating media where “language is not explained.” “There’s a certain intimacy to that which lends to solidarity and healing that I think is lost when we get caught up with “Oh, these folks won’t understand this, and we need to cater to their needs and their gaze.”…Not to say there’s not a place for that, but it’s overwhelmingly a part of this space and this genre,” Chan clarified. “[My work is] not so much centered on people’s minds that we want to transform, but to really bridge the connections that have been broken through the process of incarceration.” There is much more that needs to be torn down before a better system can be rebuilt, but working towards that goal truly begins with putting an ear to the wall and being willing to listen.   * The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

The Cucalorus Works-in-Progress (WiP) Lab supports social justice documentaries with a focus on Black storytelling. Co-designed and coordinated by Working Films, participating artists will receive feedback on their work-in-progress and explore audience engagement strategies through workshops, consultations, and community screenings during a residency at Cucalorus’ campus from September 24th through October 1st, 2023. Now in its 15th year, the Works-in-Progress Lab was launched in 2008 through a partnership between Working Films and Cucalorus. The following documentary films were selected for the Cucalorus 2023 Works-in-Progress Lab:

2023 Works-in-Progress Lab Filmmakers

Unfiltered by Chelsi Bullard

In “Little Haiti” Brooklyn a teenager challenges the ‘Angry Black Woman’ trope through poetry that ignites a quest for intergenerational healing and reclaiming her childhood in this lyrical coming-of-age film.   Chelsi Bullard is a Memphis-born and Brooklyn-based filmmaker and editor with an unwavering desire to restore beauty, well-being and complexity in stories about Black folx. She is a 2023 Big Sky Pitch participant and 2022-2023 Brown Girls Doc Mafia Black Directors Fellow. She edited the feature documentary The Right to Read  (Santa Barbara, 2023 and SXSW EDU, 2023) with director Jenny Mackenzie and executive producer LeVar Burton. She also recently co-edited Locked Out  (Kate Davis and Luchina Fisher), which was named ‘Best Documentary Feature’ at American Black Film Festival, 2023. She produced the feature documentary Coming Around directed by Sandra Itäinen (Frameline, 2023).

Mother Wit by Te Shima Anusha Brennen

Mother Wit, co-directed by Te Shima Anusha Brennen and Rajvi Desai, follows three Black trans women grieving the death of their matriarch as they fight to achieve their academic ambitions and fulfill promises they made to her.   Te Shima Anusha Brennen (they/them) is a Black, queer, trans visual storyteller based in Brooklyn, New York. As an emerging documentary filmmaker, they tell nuanced stories about Black, queer, and trans communities as they navigate institutions and systems not built to support them. Te recently made their co-directoral and cinematography debut with their film Hold On To Me, which premiered at NewFest Film Festival in October 2022 and has traveled to festivals in London, Amsterdam, Seattle, and LA in 2023. Outside of filmmaking, Te advocates to improve journalistic practices that produce harmful narratives about the trans community. They recently finished a fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where they researched how journalists can build trust in trans communities as the first step to better reporting on the community.

7 Acres and a Church by Caroline Josey Karoki

A septuagenarian and community matriarch fights to preserve the oldest continuous Black Baptist Church in North America, her heritage, and the community’s history in Savannah, Georgia.   Caroline Josey Karoki is a Kenyan-born filmmaker in Georgia with an MFA in film, drawn to telling stories featuring underserved communities and extraordinary individuals. She recently completed her first documentary feature film, The Price of Hope, which is currently in the festival circuit with selections including the Roxbury International Film Festival and Women Deliver Conference, one of the largest multi-sectoral convenings to advance gender equality. Caroline enjoys teaching film with experiences as a university professor and instructor to high school-age students. She is a board member of Savannah Women in Film and T.V. and a member of DOC Savannah and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.

 

World Makers by Ashely Tyner

Grappling with the impact of George Floyd’s murder, three Black women in Minneapolis embark on interweaving journeys to care for their communities and find inner healing.   Ashley Tyner is a writer, producer and filmmaker. She serves as Culture & Special Projects Editor at i-D Magazine, where she works to create space to amplify marginalized voices in the worlds of art and culture. She formerly led Special Projects for GARAGE Magazine. Ashley studied literature at Middlebury College and Columbia University. She is a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow.

World Makers by William Tyner

William Tyner is a filmmaker and currently works as a researcher at Google across questions of justice, equity, and product inclusion. William is currently a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow and the recipient of the 2018-2019 Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship, Code for America Fellowship, and San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation Fellow. William studied Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

In Love, In Memory by Shalon Buskirk

To preserve delicate memories of her son and buried histories of the city he was killed in, a mother collaborates with her community to compose an elegiac portrait of love, loss, and legacy.   Shalon Buskirk is a community leader who has dedicated her life to protecting, helping, and saving young adults from violence within her community. She was born and raised in Allentown, PA. After the tragic death of her firstborn son, Parris, she started to work towards a nonprofit for young adults that engages them with the resources they need for success. Buskirk was a driving force behind the first major funding in the city for youth violence prevention. She is a storyteller, a mother of eight children, and the CEO/Founder of the Parris J. Lane Memorial Foundation. She was a Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellow in 2022, a Visiting Fellow at MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute in 2020 and 2022, and the co-author of United Hearts for Autism: Stories from Caregivers and Self-Advocates. She is a board member for Community Bike Works, and on the advisory council for Allentown’s Salvation Army and Youth Teen Renovations.

 

Beyond Walls breaks down barriers in its most recent screening event at the Mayday Space in New York City.   This summer, Working Films is launching our organizing initiative Beyond Walls. In partnership with the Center for Political Education, Critical Resistance, MPD150 and Survived + Punished, this project helps us reimagine better alternatives to policing and prisons through the power of storytelling. Beyond Walls features documentary films that help define and amplify what abolition of the prison industrial complex* looks like. As part of our initiative, we are touring these films with organizations that are directly impacted by and leading the change toward prison abolition. In our most recent event on June 29th, community members and organizers gathered at the Mayday Space, in Bushwick, NY. Mayday Space is known as a hub for movement leaders to work, learn, celebrate and build together. The event was a powerful demonstration of space, story and solidarity coming together. The featured films highlight the social and political realities of incarcerated people and how maintaining connection beyond walls can be a form of resistance against the carceral system. After the screening, attendees broke into small group discussions and then took part in a letter-writing workshop with Black & Pink’s NYC Chapter. Black & Pink is a nonprofit dedicated to the liberation of LGBTQIA2S+ people and those living with HIV/AIDS who have been affected by the criminal punishment system. In their PenPal program, Black & Pink provides a platform for incarcerated and non-incarcerated people to forge relationships as a means of support building and harm reduction. The workshop was an opportunity for guests to connect with LGBTQIA2S+ individuals who are currently incarcerated.

“Because they had just watched the films, [event] participants were very thoughtful and intentional with their cards,” said Bran, a Black & Pink NYC organizer, in regard to the event’s letter-writing activity.

Overall, attendees were able to further understand the realities of incarcerated individuals and gain a new perspective on what justice can look like.

“[It’s important to] have community members watch community-led movies,” said Ienna Fernandez, the programs manager at the Mayday Space. The Mayday Space hosts events in collaboration with grassroots organizations and individual activists. This event allowed people from different industries and regions to connect and share new ways of organizing. Tanya Nguyen, an organizer at Black & Pink NYC, emphasized how events like this have the power to “re-energize people and remind them of the human faces behind the work that we do.”

Beyond Walls is part of Working Films’ “Docs in Action” program. Docs in Action provides funding and distribution to short documentaries that explore topics of social and environmental justice. Working Films takes a collaborative approach when working with host organizations to curate screening events. Our goal is to help them facilitate activities and discussions that best align with the values of their community and their organization. With the films as a catalyst, the screenings allow time to inform, plan and take action toward a better future.   * The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.   Host a Beyond Walls screening: HOST A SCREENING Beyond Walls actions and resources: ACTIONS & RESOURCES

For a documentary film to make a difference, a solid strategy for audience engagement and strong partnerships are key. Filmmakers often lack time to do this work themselves or the expertise and the funds to pay for it. Emerging filmmakers, creators of color, and underrepresented artists can face the biggest hurdles, despite the potential of their projects. Working Films’ response to this challenge is the Impact Kickstart, a program offering in-kind partnership and strategy development to underrepresented documentary directors with feature films in progress that hold great promise to catalyze action to address important and current social issues. “As the documentary and social justice landscape continues to shift and evolve, Working Films remains committed to prioritizing and uplifting underrepresented filmmakers who often face the biggest hurdles despite the potential of their projects,” says Gerry Leonard, Director of Filmmaker Services. “We believe the Impact Kickstart program and grant reflects that commitment to redistribute resources and access within the documentary film ecosystem. This program taps into a film’s inherent strengths, rooted in the goal of creating collective social change and impact.” Now in its sixth year, the Impact Kickstart program has helped underrepresented filmmakers create strategic goals for impact and specific plans to engage future partners, funders, and audiences in meaningful ways. Impact Kickstart was created to fill a gap in support for the impact campaigns of underrepresented filmmakers, including directors who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC), undocumented, LGBQ+, nonbinary, transgender, disabled, and female directors with a majority female and/or underrepresented film team.

APPLY TO 2023 IMPACT KICKSTART

Two films will be selected for Impact Kickstart in 2023. Each selected filmmaker will receive an Impact Kickstart from Working Films that includes the planning, facilitation, and reporting out from a day-long strategy summit with potential partners and key collaborators. This summit will leave filmmakers well-positioned to carry out an impact campaign with a clear strategy, goals, partners, and a report that can be used for engaging supporters. Impact Kickstart recipients will also receive impact campaign funding of $60,000. The Impact Kickstart 2023 Call for Applications is currently open! To apply, visit our 2023 Call for Applications page HERE. The deadline for Impact Kickstart 2023 applications is Thursday, August 31 at 11:59pm EST. To apply, complete our online application using submittable. You’ll create a quick login to work on your application and have your information saved. Before you start, you can find a preview of the application questions in this PDF. The Impact Kickstart 2023 webinar can be viewed here. You can also check out this document of frequently asked questions. If you have any additional questions in the meantime, please email gleonard@workingfilms.org  Working Films strives to make all of our events and programs accessible, including our application processes. To request an accessibility accommodation or adjustment, please email gleonard@workingfilms.org, or call us at 910-342-9000.

Working Films, in collaboration with Amazon Labor Union, North Carolina AFL-CIO, Starbucks Workers United, Union of Southern Service Workers, and United Farm Workers, are issuing a call for short films that will amplify workers seeking to have their voices heard. Since 2018, through a program called Docs in Action, Working Films has funded, curated, and distributed short films that illuminate and offer solutions to critical issues facing the nation. In 2023, the fund will focus on the growing wave of worker-led organizing throughout the United States. “With this momentous rise of workers coming together to say ‘enough is enough,’ especially in industries that are set up to keep workers from unionizing, there could not be a better time for films about workers' rights. To expand on this moment, we need stories that share the value and significance of unions as well as films that share success stories and a ‘how-to’ of workers fighting back and winning” said Andy Myers, Director of Campaigns and Strategy at Working Films. “We hope the films we fund and curate will demonstrate the possibilities of the moment we are in and further build this surge in labor organizing.” Unions offer hope and support for workers in our economy, serving as a means to address workplace concerns and promote equality. They also intersect with various justice-related struggles of our time. The 2023 Docs In Action Film Fund plans to showcase these aspects, emphasize the collective power of worker-led movements, and demonstrate that unity among workers can overcome obstacles. The films produced through this initiative will build understanding and empathy, and will inspire workers to organize within their own workplaces while fostering solidarity with the broader labor movement. "In the last few years, there have been a lot of uprisings, strikes, and unions. There are people who are interested, who weren't before, but a lot of people don’t know our rights as workers. If I knew what I know now - my own organizing would have really benefited. The films we choose will share these rights and give workers the tools they need to to organize their own workplaces. These stories will show that it’s possible to be done anywhere” said Chris Smalls, President of Amazon Labor Union. According to Eric Winston, a representative of the Ignite Committee of the Union for Southern Service Workers (USSW), “we really want stories that expand on the idea of what a union is. People are told being in a union means a boss tells you you are in a union, but a union just means coworkers coming together and saying they will be one voice to make conditions better. We also need stories that share the struggles low wage workers go through including their mental and physical health.” The 2023 Docs in Action program includes two tracks. First, filmmakers can apply for up to $30,000 in funding for short documentary films. Filmmakers with works-in-progress can apply for funding to complete short documentaries under 30 minutes. The funding will exclusively cover the completion costs of the projects. Second, filmmakers can submit completed documentaries or narrative films to be included in a compilation that will tour the U.S. in 2024. Films selected for the compilation will receive screening rights fees. Working Films will also offer free consultation, peer-to-peer networking, and other in-kind support opportunities. Priority will be given to films featuring personal stories and those created by individuals directly affected by the issues. Filmmakers may apply for both tracks of the Docs in Action program, but only one project per applicant is permissible for funding consideration. The director or producer of the film must be the applicant. All selected projects must be fully completed no later than May 1st, 2024. The deadline for applying for both tracks is 11:59 ET on August 13th, 2023. More information can be found at www.workingfilms.org/docsinaction2023.