Bring your questions and hear from an array of fellowships for indie doc makers across the U.S. Find out what makes their program unique, best practices (both for providers and participants), what filmmakers can expect from a fellowship experience, and what the right fellowship can provide for your film and your career. For filmmakers, this is your chance to find out what programs to set your sights on in the coming years and how to readjust your application to rise above the competition. For organizations with their own filmmaker support programs, this is an opportunity to learn from many collective decades of experience and perhaps find new ways to generate lasting impact.
BAVC Media has been a community hub and resource for media makers in the Bay Area and across the country since 1976, serving several thousand freelancers, filmmakers, activists and archivists every year. The BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship is a 10-month collaborative, community-driven intensive that provides first time documentary feature directors with travel, mentorship, critical feedback, education, unrestricted funding, and the opportunity to form lasting and supportive peer relationships.
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Nuala Cabral is an award-winning filmmaker, educator and activist who is committed to the power of storytelling and media to advance social justice movements. For over a decade, Nuala taught media production, media advocacy, and media literacy in high schools, colleges and community spaces. An alum of Third World Newsreel's documentary workshop program, Nuala developed the youth program at BlackStar Film Festival and supervised youth media programs for high school students, including the award-winning journalism program, POPPYN (Presenting Our Perspective: Philly Youth News). Nuala currently serves as Program Officer at Independence Public Media Foundation, which supports movement media, community storytelling and internet for all in the Philadelphia region. Since 2020, IPMF has awarded over 2 million dollars and 134 grants to local filmmakers. Grant decisions are made by a panel of local filmmakers, many of whom are previous grantees. In addition to grant awards, IPMF provides grantees with capacity building support and networking opportunities.
Heather Fipps is the Senior Program Director at The Redford Center where she cultivates funding and artist development opportunities for environmental filmmakers and produces impact-driven media projects and campaigns. She is a Co-Founder of the Hollywood Climate Summit, an international conference for climate-conscious storytellers, supported by Netflix, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and many more. As a Professor of Media and Social Impact at California State University Los Angeles, she founded a service learning and impact program for filmmakers and produced over 30 community-led video campaigns for frontline organizations. As the Head of Production at the Studio of Mark Bradford, her social impact film production work was recognized by the Global Campus of Human Rights. Heather has a decade of experience working on multi-platform content and campaigns for Netflix, BBC, Hulu, CBS, PBS, Deaf West, California Air Emissions Board, The League of Conservation Voters, and the US Dept. of Health. Applications for the 2024 Redford Center Grants Fellowship are open now, April 4 – May 10, 2024. Environmental nonfiction feature films or docuseries at any stage of development, production, or postproduction are eligible to apply. Each film awarded will receive a first year (2024) $25,000 grant to support production and impact campaign expenses, an opportunity to present at an intimate, invitational virtual film showcase with funders and industry leaders, and a trip to an in-person Grantee Summit for project development and advisement. In year two (2025), grantees will have the opportunity to be considered for a second grant to support the production’s completion, and impact. In addition to financial support, we work in a grantee cohort model and provide learning sessions and opportunities, networking and promotional support, and community building to all grantees.
Marcia Jarmel Marcia Jarmel is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Director of Filmmaker Services at the Jewish Film Institute where she oversees the Institute's renowned Filmmaker Residency and Completion Grants programs, which serve a national and international community of independent filmmakers. She co-founded PatchWorks Films with husband-collaborator Ken Schneider in 1994 and has been producing, directing, and managing impact for their slate of award-winning films for over two decades. Together, they’ve produced five feature documentaries and many shorts including Los Hermanos/The Brothers (PBS/Arte film) which was nominated for Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association and awarded Best Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival. Marcia's work has been funded by public broadcasting's Independent Television Service (ITVS), Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), the National Endowment for the Arts, and many others. She has taught both undergrad and graduate film courses at NYU and Chapman University and has been honored with residencies with Working Films, the Fledgling Fund, SFFilm, the Kopkind Colony, and BAVC's Media Maker. She has served as a juror for the Emmys, BAVC MediaMaker, and many film festivals. Information on her work can be found at patchworksfilms.net.
Kiyoko McCrae is the Program Director at Chicken & Egg Pictures and works closely with the CEO and Program staff to strategize, plan and oversee the implementation of all Chicken & Egg programs. Previously, Kiyoko was Director of Documentary Programming and Filmmaker Labs at the New Orleans Film Society. There, she led the documentary film programming for the New Orleans Film Festival and worked to connect Southern filmmakers to resources and relationships through the Emerging Voices Directors Lab, Southern Producers Lab, and South Pitch. Prior to that, she was the Managing Director of Junebug Productions, a nonprofit organization that produces and presents art that questions and confronts inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community in New Orleans. She has worked as an organizational development consultant for social justice arts organizations and is an award-winning film and theater director. Her films have screened at AFI Docs, Calgary, Hot Springs, Flickers Rhode Island, IndieMemphis, Cucalorus, and Milwaukee and have been supported by the Center for Asian American Media, Firelight Media, Reel South, World Channel, Southern Documentary Fund, and others. She is a 2017-2018 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, a 2020 John O’Neal Cultural Arts Fellow, and a member of A-Doc. Kiyoko received her BFA in Theatre Arts from NYU’s Tisch School. She was raised in Tokyo and has also lived in London and New Orleans. She is happy to be returning to New York with her husband and two children.
Lucy J. Mukerjee (she/they) is a queer British-Indian cultural worker, dedicated to elevating the careers of underestimated storytellers, and leveraging the power of film to expand perspectives and shatter stereotypes. In 2023, Lucy became the Director of the Documentary Lab at Firelight Media, the premier destination for non-fiction cinema by and about communities of color, founded in 1998 by Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith. Lucy’s 20+ years of industry experience include the roles of Director of Programming at Outfest and NewFest LGBTQ+ Film Festivals, and Senior Programmer at the Tribeca Festival. In 2019, alongside friends and colleagues from festivals worldwide, Lucy co-founded the Programmers Of Colour Collective, a global grassroots group of BIPOC film festival programmers calling for transparency and accountability in the curatorial process.
Dawn D. Valadez is the Director of Youth and Artistic Development at BAVC Media. She is responsible for the youth programs in San Francisco and the East Bay including Reel Stories. Youth programming includes out-of-school time programs, summer camps, and in-school residencies. Dawn co-directs national artistic programming such as the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship and MediaMaker Connect. The BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship is a ten-month-long intensive supporting first time feature documentary directors as they near post-production. Dawn is a queer Xicana and an award-winning documentary director and producer. She is the Producer/ Co-director of The Pushouts (2018) a film about Dr Victor Rios. Her award-winning first film, Going On 13 (2008), premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. She is a producer on several film projects including Madres Qué Luchan with Rodrigo Reyes about the mothers who are fighting for justice for their daughters who have been murdered in Mexico. Dawn’s work has received awards, funding, and residencies from many incredible organizations and initiatives. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, FWD-Doc, Film Fatales, the Bay Area Women’s Director Collective, and BAMMS. Dawn received her Master’s degree in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.
Alana Waksman coordinates nonfiction programs, fiscal sponsorship, and special initiatives with Artist Development at Film Independent, including Documentary Story Lab, Documentary Producing Lab, Amplifier Fellowship, and Fast Track. For the last eight years, she has produced Big Sky Pitch, DocShop Filmmakers Forum, as well as served as a features programmer for Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Previously, she previously served as co-director of Montana Film Festival. Alana's fiction feature We Burn Like This stars Madeleine Coghlan (The Rookie) and Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs) and was released in 2022. She is currently in production for her debut documentary and in development for her sophomore fiction feature. Alana is an alum of the USC School of Cinematic Arts M.F.A. in Film & Television Production program. Film Independent's Artist Programs include: Documentary Story Lab, a week-long documentary lab held in the spring for directors, focusing on nonfiction features in post-production, with an emphasis on structure and editing; Documentary Producing Lab week-long documentary producing lab occurring each fall working with producers who have nonfiction features in active development, production or post-production, with an emphasis on financing, finishing, and releasing their films; Fast Track is a four-day film finance market where select fiction and nonfiction filmmakers pitch to top executives, financiers, agents, and distributors; Film Independent Works in Progress Series (Fi WiPS) offers nonfiction filmmakers a place to screen their films in a supportive environment prior to completion, receiving constructive feedback that will ready them for exhibition.
Bring your questions and hear from an array of fellowships for indie doc makers across the U.S. Find out what makes their program unique, best practices (both for providers and participants), what filmmakers can expect from a fellowship experience, and what the right fellowship can provide for your film and your career. For filmmakers, this is your chance to find out what programs to set your sights on in the coming years and how to readjust your application to rise above the competition. For organizations with their own filmmaker support programs, this is an opportunity to learn from many collective decades of experience and perhaps find new ways to generate lasting impact.
BAVC Media has been a community hub and resource for media makers in the Bay Area and across the country since 1976, serving several thousand freelancers, filmmakers, activists and archivists every year. The BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship is a 10-month collaborative, community-driven intensive that provides first time documentary feature directors with travel, mentorship, critical feedback, education, unrestricted funding, and the opportunity to form lasting and supportive peer relationships.
Biographies (submitted by the speakers):
Nuala Cabral is an award-winning filmmaker, educator and activist who is committed to the power of storytelling and media to advance social justice movements. For over a decade, Nuala taught media production, media advocacy, and media literacy in high schools, colleges and community spaces. An alum of Third World Newsreel's documentary workshop program, Nuala developed the youth program at BlackStar Film Festival and supervised youth media programs for high school students, including the award-winning journalism program, POPPYN (Presenting Our Perspective: Philly Youth News). Nuala currently serves as Program Officer at Independence Public Media Foundation, which supports movement media, community storytelling and internet for all in the Philadelphia region. Since 2020, IPMF has awarded over 2 million dollars and 134 grants to local filmmakers. Grant decisions are made by a panel of local filmmakers, many of whom are previous grantees. In addition to grant awards, IPMF provides grantees with capacity building support and networking opportunities.
Heather Fipps is the Senior Program Director at The Redford Center where she cultivates funding and artist development opportunities for environmental filmmakers and produces impact-driven media projects and campaigns. She is a Co-Founder of the Hollywood Climate Summit, an international conference for climate-conscious storytellers, supported by Netflix, Paramount, NBCUniversal, and many more. As a Professor of Media and Social Impact at California State University Los Angeles, she founded a service learning and impact program for filmmakers and produced over 30 community-led video campaigns for frontline organizations. As the Head of Production at the Studio of Mark Bradford, her social impact film production work was recognized by the Global Campus of Human Rights. Heather has a decade of experience working on multi-platform content and campaigns for Netflix, BBC, Hulu, CBS, PBS, Deaf West, California Air Emissions Board, The League of Conservation Voters, and the US Dept. of Health. Applications for the 2024 Redford Center Grants Fellowship are open now, April 4 – May 10, 2024. Environmental nonfiction feature films or docuseries at any stage of development, production, or postproduction are eligible to apply. Each film awarded will receive a first year (2024) $25,000 grant to support production and impact campaign expenses, an opportunity to present at an intimate, invitational virtual film showcase with funders and industry leaders, and a trip to an in-person Grantee Summit for project development and advisement. In year two (2025), grantees will have the opportunity to be considered for a second grant to support the production’s completion, and impact. In addition to financial support, we work in a grantee cohort model and provide learning sessions and opportunities, networking and promotional support, and community building to all grantees.
Marcia Jarmel Marcia Jarmel is an award-winning independent filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Director of Filmmaker Services at the Jewish Film Institute where she oversees the Institute's renowned Filmmaker Residency and Completion Grants programs, which serve a national and international community of independent filmmakers. She co-founded PatchWorks Films with husband-collaborator Ken Schneider in 1994 and has been producing, directing, and managing impact for their slate of award-winning films for over two decades. Together, they’ve produced five feature documentaries and many shorts including Los Hermanos/The Brothers (PBS/Arte film) which was nominated for Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association and awarded Best Documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival. Marcia's work has been funded by public broadcasting's Independent Television Service (ITVS), Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), the National Endowment for the Arts, and many others. She has taught both undergrad and graduate film courses at NYU and Chapman University and has been honored with residencies with Working Films, the Fledgling Fund, SFFilm, the Kopkind Colony, and BAVC's Media Maker. She has served as a juror for the Emmys, BAVC MediaMaker, and many film festivals. Information on her work can be found at patchworksfilms.net.
Kiyoko McCrae is the Program Director at Chicken & Egg Pictures and works closely with the CEO and Program staff to strategize, plan and oversee the implementation of all Chicken & Egg programs. Previously, Kiyoko was Director of Documentary Programming and Filmmaker Labs at the New Orleans Film Society. There, she led the documentary film programming for the New Orleans Film Festival and worked to connect Southern filmmakers to resources and relationships through the Emerging Voices Directors Lab, Southern Producers Lab, and South Pitch. Prior to that, she was the Managing Director of Junebug Productions, a nonprofit organization that produces and presents art that questions and confronts inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community in New Orleans. She has worked as an organizational development consultant for social justice arts organizations and is an award-winning film and theater director. Her films have screened at AFI Docs, Calgary, Hot Springs, Flickers Rhode Island, IndieMemphis, Cucalorus, and Milwaukee and have been supported by the Center for Asian American Media, Firelight Media, Reel South, World Channel, Southern Documentary Fund, and others. She is a 2017-2018 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, a 2020 John O’Neal Cultural Arts Fellow, and a member of A-Doc. Kiyoko received her BFA in Theatre Arts from NYU’s Tisch School. She was raised in Tokyo and has also lived in London and New Orleans. She is happy to be returning to New York with her husband and two children.
Lucy J. Mukerjee (she/they) is a queer British-Indian cultural worker, dedicated to elevating the careers of underestimated storytellers, and leveraging the power of film to expand perspectives and shatter stereotypes. In 2023, Lucy became the Director of the Documentary Lab at Firelight Media, the premier destination for non-fiction cinema by and about communities of color, founded in 1998 by Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith. Lucy’s 20+ years of industry experience include the roles of Director of Programming at Outfest and NewFest LGBTQ+ Film Festivals, and Senior Programmer at the Tribeca Festival. In 2019, alongside friends and colleagues from festivals worldwide, Lucy co-founded the Programmers Of Colour Collective, a global grassroots group of BIPOC film festival programmers calling for transparency and accountability in the curatorial process.
Dawn D. Valadez is the Director of Youth and Artistic Development at BAVC Media. She is responsible for the youth programs in San Francisco and the East Bay including Reel Stories. Youth programming includes out-of-school time programs, summer camps, and in-school residencies. Dawn co-directs national artistic programming such as the BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship and MediaMaker Connect. The BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship is a ten-month-long intensive supporting first time feature documentary directors as they near post-production. Dawn is a queer Xicana and an award-winning documentary director and producer. She is the Producer/ Co-director of The Pushouts (2018) a film about Dr Victor Rios. Her award-winning first film, Going On 13 (2008), premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. She is a producer on several film projects including Madres Qué Luchan with Rodrigo Reyes about the mothers who are fighting for justice for their daughters who have been murdered in Mexico. Dawn’s work has received awards, funding, and residencies from many incredible organizations and initiatives. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, FWD-Doc, Film Fatales, the Bay Area Women’s Director Collective, and BAMMS. Dawn received her Master’s degree in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.
Alana Waksman coordinates nonfiction programs, fiscal sponsorship, and special initiatives with Artist Development at Film Independent, including Documentary Story Lab, Documentary Producing Lab, Amplifier Fellowship, and Fast Track. For the last eight years, she has produced Big Sky Pitch, DocShop Filmmakers Forum, as well as served as a features programmer for Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Previously, she previously served as co-director of Montana Film Festival. Alana's fiction feature We Burn Like This stars Madeleine Coghlan (The Rookie) and Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs) and was released in 2022. She is currently in production for her debut documentary and in development for her sophomore fiction feature. Alana is an alum of the USC School of Cinematic Arts M.F.A. in Film & Television Production program. Film Independent's Artist Programs include: Documentary Story Lab, a week-long documentary lab held in the spring for directors, focusing on nonfiction features in post-production, with an emphasis on structure and editing; Documentary Producing Lab week-long documentary producing lab occurring each fall working with producers who have nonfiction features in active development, production or post-production, with an emphasis on financing, finishing, and releasing their films; Fast Track is a four-day film finance market where select fiction and nonfiction filmmakers pitch to top executives, financiers, agents, and distributors; Film Independent Works in Progress Series (Fi WiPS) offers nonfiction filmmakers a place to screen their films in a supportive environment prior to completion, receiving constructive feedback that will ready them for exhibition.