Factors North Awards Fellowships To Various Slate Of Doc Filmmakers – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: The Points North Institute right this moment introduced recipients of three of its prestigious fellowship packages, forward of subsequent month’s Camden International Film Festival in Maine.

The trio of packages — the Factors North Fellowship, North Star Fellowship, and LEF/CIFF Fellowship – will assist a complete of 16 documentary initiatives now in growth within the U.S. and a dozen different nations [see full list of projects below].

“Eighty p.c of this yr’s Factors North-supported initiatives are directed or co-directed by filmmakers from backgrounds traditionally marginalized or excluded from the movie trade,” the institute famous in a launch, “together with those that determine as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or as an individual with a incapacity.”

The fellowship packages, consisting of personal workshops, screenings, trade conferences and different occasions, will happen each in-person in the course of the Camden Worldwide Movie Pageant and on-line. The pageant, itself a program of the Factors North Institute, unfolds alongside a bucolic stretch of the Maine shoreline.

“Factors North’s Artist Packages are designed to attach filmmakers with mentors, funders, and potential collaborators, utilizing the 18th annual Camden Worldwide Movie Pageant (September 15-25) as a platform to construct a group of assist, nurture the careers of rising nonfiction storytellers, and assist them develop a stronger creative voice,” the institute mentioned. “[T]he pageant and its concurrent filmmaker labs stay one of many nation’s largest and most worldwide gatherings of the documentary group.”

“This represents one other watershed yr for our artist growth work,” mentioned Sean Flynn, program director and co-founder of the Factors North Institute. “In a quickly altering trade, impartial filmmakers are on the lookout for inspiring areas like Factors North the place they will take inventive dangers, construct group, entry sources, and develop their initiatives and careers on their very own phrases.”

Every of the three fellowships incorporates a singular focus:

• The Factors North Fellowship helps six filmmaking groups as they develop their pitches and publicly current their documentary options in progress to a panel of funders and distributors at CIFF’s fashionable Factors North Pitch, which might be moderated by Kickstarter’s Elise McCave.
• The North Star Fellowship helps 5 modern media artists and filmmakers of shade who’re growing initiatives on the intersections of inventive nonfiction and modern artwork practices. This system creates area for mentorship, crucial dialogue, and trade entry, enabling a deeper reference to the documentary movie group and new methods for bridging completely different modes of documentary artwork.
• The LEF/CIFF Fellowship, a program developed in partnership with the LEF Basis, provides seven New England-based filmmakers with function documentaries in manufacturing or post-production the alternatives to attend CIFF for undertaking growth workshops and trade conferences.

Recipients of the 2022 Factors North Fellowship are:

Between the Rains Directed by Andrew Harrison Brown & Moses Thuranira; Produced by Samuel Ekomol

Filmed over the course of 4 consecutive years throughout report low annual precipitation in northern Kenya, Between the Rains is a function collaboration with the Turkana-Ngaremara group that seeks to grasp the experiences of a childhood caught inside a standard tradition that may be a casualty of local weather change.

Flying Cows Directed by Vahagn Khachatryan & Aren Malakyan; Produced by Jia Zhao

Each month, cows are shipped from Armenia to Iran on cargo planes. As battle approaches, individuals go away their lands behind and observe the trail of their herds.

Gross Nationwide Happiness Directed by Dorottya Zurbo & Arun Bhattarai; Produced by Noémi Veronika Szakonyi

A satirical highway film of two Happiness Brokers working for the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan touring door to door measuring individuals’s happiness ranges whereas looking for their very own among the many distant Himalayan mountains.

Any individual’s Gone Directed by Cyrus Moussavi & Hubert Taylor; Produced by Brittany Nugent

Any individual’s Gone is a feature-length documentary about 94-year-old religious singer Brother Theotis Taylor instructed by a outstanding archive of footage collected by his son, Hubert. It merges Hubert’s huge house video archive with modern vérité footage to inform a multi-generational, multi-vocal story of Brother Taylor and his sacred music.

The Stock Directed by Ilana Coleman; Produced by Jamie Gonçalves & Abril López

The Stock juxtaposes testimonials of moms looking for their disappeared sons towards a committee of linguists on the lookout for a lacking phrase.

Time Hunter Directed by Daniel Chein & Mark Mushiva; Produced by David Felix Sutcliffe

A revolutionary agent is dispatched to steal know-how from his colonial oppressors to make use of towards them. Can he assist his individuals with out shedding himself within the maze of the diaspora?

Recipients of the 2022 North Star Fellowship are:

Coming To You, For You, And About You… Directed and Produced by Alexis McCrimmon

Drawing from archival footage set within the Black media explosion of the Eighties, Coming to you, for you and about you… is a lyrical exploration of unearthed group historical past.

“Más Y Más Y Más Flores” Directed and Produced by César Martínez Barba

The cempasúchil flower, used in the course of the Day of the Lifeless to information souls again house, travels by a world dealing with grief from a worldwide pandemic.

Persian Cheetah Directed and Produced by Pegah Pasalar

In my household, there was lengthy a rumor of a misplaced Quran that held, on its final web page, the outlines of a dense household tree. Each older member of the family is aware of of the tree’s existence, however none know all of the entanglements of the branches…

The Style of Mango Directed by Chloe Abrahams; Produced by Elliott Whitton

A lyrical exploration of motherhood and pleasure within the face of trauma, The Style of Mango questions how we will proceed loving those that typically give us ache in return.

We Imagine! Directed and Produced by Janah Elise

Calling not only for socialism in a single nation, however all through the galaxy, We Imagine! is the story of Juan Posadas, an Argentine who, within the Nineteen Sixties, appealed for solidarity with extraterrestrials, and whose quixotic beliefs are right this moment legendarized in numerous memes throughout the web and social media. Taking the memeification of Posadas as some extent of departure, We Imagine! examines our renewed obsession with area journey and UFOs inside the context of this forgotten piece of Latin American historical past, and uncovers a nostalgia for the earnest perception that a greater world is feasible.

Recipients of the 2022 LEF/CIFF Fellowship are:

From The Land Directed by John Hulsey

From the Land displays on the unstable relationship between human life and the land underneath situations of financial precarity and environmental decline.

Extra Than A Title Directed by Sandra Jaffe; Produced by Eric Juhola

When a filmmaker’s adopted Chinese language teenager comes out as transgender, she struggles to grasp and defend him as he turns into a person throughout turbulent occasions.

9 Directed by Rachael DeCruz & Jeremy S. Levine; Produced by Rachael DeCruz, Jeremy S. Levine, and Gerald Hankerson

9 tells the story of Gerald Hankerson as he campaigns to get his former cellmate and father work out of jail and fights for the boys he left behind. It’s concerning the enduring bonds of friendship cast throughout generations and the ability it provides them to struggle an oppressive system.

The Gatherers Directed by Suzanne Greenlaw & Chek Wingo; Produced by Daylight Media Collective

Indigenous individuals on the forefront of rematriation and land again actions within the Northeastern United States enact conventional information techniques which can be elementary to maintain human life on earth.

Untitled Altered States Movie Directed and Produced by Julie Mallozzi

5 disparate rituals induce altered states of consciousness to heal medical situations, psychological sickness, and persistent ache—and lead viewers into their very own meditative trance.

Along with the above packages produced and curated by Factors North, the institute will welcome three further fellowship cohorts to this yr’s pageant. “Brown Women Doc Mafia, whose mission is to bolster the inventive {and professional} success of ladies and non-binary individuals of shade working within the documentary movie trade, will journey to CIFF with 2022 recipients of the BGDM Black Administrators Fellowship and the BGDM Sustainable Artist Fellowship,” in response to a launch. “The Bay Space Video Coalition will carry the 2022-23 class of 9 BAVC MediaMaker Fellows to CIFF for his or her first convening, the place they’ll take trade conferences alongside different Factors North-supported filmmakers.”

Sponsors of the Factors North Institute’s 2022 Artist Packages embody CNN Movies, Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, Nia Tero, LEF Basis, SHOWTIME®, MSNBC Movies, RandomGood Basis, Netflix, Kickstarter, TV5 Monde, ITVS, and Maine Media Workshops + Faculty.