{"id":15241,"date":"2022-05-13T15:23:58","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T13:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=15241"},"modified":"2022-05-13T15:24:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T13:24:00","slug":"meet-the-20-mediamakers-selected-for-the-new-sundance-institute-humanities-sustainability-fellowship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2022\/05\/13\/meet-the-20-mediamakers-selected-for-the-new-sundance-institute-humanities-sustainability-fellowship\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the 20 Mediamakers Selected For The New Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellowship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pilot Program Directs Individual Support to Pandemic-Affected Nonfiction Storytellers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the names of the mediamakers selected for the new Humanities Sustainability Fellowship, a year-long program providing 20 U.S.-based under-resourced nonfiction mediamakers whose work and livelihood have been grossly affected by the pandemic with direct, unrestricted stipends to supplement their income. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities<\/a> (NEH), each Fellow will receive $60,000 in installments over the course of 12 months, along with the support from paid humanities advisors who will guide through the granting term (April 2022\u2013March 2023) with mentorship, project advice, and other tailored non-financial support to deepen the humanities content and approach of the work. Fellows will also be offered professional development opportunities throughout the term, including a Creator+ Collab membership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Led by Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs<\/strong>, Director of Institute Granting, the Fellowship selected individuals at all phases of their careers producing and\/or directing humanities-focused feature-length documentary films and nonfiction emerging media. The cohort includes 10% lifelong career mediamakers, 60% mid-career and 30% early career. The Fellows are based in New York, California, Wisconsin, Illinois, Puerto Rico and Missouri and at the time of application their current projects were primarily in production (55%) with 30% in development and 15% in post-production. The Fellows selected identify as 70% female, 15% male and 15% nonbinary–they are 10% African American, 15% Asian, 15% Biracial, 25% Caucasian, 5% Latinx, 15% Middle Eastern, and 10% Native American.

“This fellowship is a bold rethinking of what supporting artistic practice can look like, and we are so honored to be one of three nonprofit organizations selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities in piloting it,” said Carrie Lozano<\/strong>, Director, Documentary Film and Artist Programs. “While project-based funding will always remain core to our work, direct individual support is another element in our mission to expand the community we serve and explore new ways to serve mediamakers. Two years into the pandemic, there\u2019s been a shift in the national consciousness that recognizes personal stability is deeply intertwined with innovation at work\u2013completing projects and succeeding at taking on additional ones is much harder when you\u2019re under-resourced or stretched thin! Sundance Institute has had a front-row seat to witnessing the challenges those within the nonfiction space have faced in sustaining their creative practice, and as such it\u2019s thrilling to roll out a new funding model for a group of exemplary mediamakers whose careers we want to champion.\u201d
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\u201cThe National Endowment for the Humanities commends Sundance Institute for its work administering American Rescue Plan funds to assist nonfiction mediamakers affected by the pandemic,\u201d said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). \u201cThese fellowships will provide crucial support to talented professionals in film and digital media working to bring important, untold stories about culture, history, and community to the American public.\u201d
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The year-long Fellowship kicked off in April 2022. The selection committee for the program included: Cristina Azocar<\/strong> (Professor of Journalism – San Francisco State University), Mar\u00eda C\u00e9lleri <\/strong>(Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies – University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Imani M. Cheers <\/strong>(Director, Producer, Interim Senior Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Office of the Provost, Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs – George Washington University), James Fleury<\/strong> (Lecturer in Film and Media Studies – Washington University in St. Louis), Shaleece Haas<\/strong> (Filmmaker, Journalist), John L. Jackson, Jr.<\/strong> (Filmmaker, Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, Richard Perry University Professor – University of Pennsylvania), Emelie Mahdavian<\/strong> (Filmmaker, Assistant Professor – University of Utah Department of Film & Media Arts), Cash (Melissa) Ragona<\/strong> (Associate Professor of Art History\/Critical Theory & Independent Curator, School of Art – Carnegie Mellon University), Ignacio M. S\u00e1nchez Prado<\/strong> (Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Film and Media Studies – Washington University in St. Louis) and Poh Si Teng <\/strong>(Producer, Journalist, Filmmaker).
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The fellows selected for the 2022 Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellowship are:

Elizabeth Ai<\/strong> is a director, producer, and writer. She\u2019s a fellow of Berlinale Talents, Center for Asian American Media, Film Independent, Firelight Media, and Sundance Institute. Elizabeth and her team are currently in production with New Wave and simultaneously developing the dramatic series adaptation.
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Nesa Azimi<\/strong> is an independent filmmaker living in New York City. She has worked on staff as a director and producer for Rain Media, PBS Frontline, Fault Lines on Al Jazeera, National Geographic, and the Cin\u00e9 Institute of Haiti. Driver will be her first feature film.
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Stephanie Black<\/strong> is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include feature-length documentaries H-2 Worker; Life & Debt and Africa Unite.
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Shirley Bruno<\/strong>\u2019s work celebrates neglected histories by way of rumors, dreams, collective memories both real and imagined. An alumna of Le Fresnoy and London Film School, her work screens internationally at film festivals, museums, and galleries. Shirley currently lives and works in Brooklyn and support for her work includes Creative Capital, Jerome Foundation, NYFA, NYSCA.\u00a0
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Zaina Bseiso<\/strong> is a filmmaker and curator working in documentary and experimental cinema. She\u2019s interested in diasporic relations to land, mysticism and hope. Her work conflates and contracts sounds, images, gestures and histories to explore the multiple possibilities of Return. Zaina\u2019s practice traverses among Egypt, Palestine, Cuba and the US.
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William D. Caballero<\/strong> is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, multimedia storyteller, 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, and 2021 Creative Capital Award recipient. Caballero\u2019s animated documentaries have debuted at the 2022 and 2017 Sundance Film Festival, 2013 Slamdance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and on major networks, such as HBO, PBS, and Univision.
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Amber Fares<\/strong> is an award winning director, producer and cinematographer. She directed and produced Speed Sisters (Netflix 2015), co-directed Convergence (Netflix 2021), was cinematographer on Boycott (2021) and co-produced The Judge (PBS 2017), which won a Peabody Award. Amber is a Sundance Momentum Fellow (2019) and Sundance Editing + Story Lab Fellow (2014).
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Ro Haber<\/strong> is an aesthetically-minded Writer and Director who works in narrative and doc. They are working on a cyberfeminist horror retelling of the Frankenstein story, Shell.ai, which is being produced by Seaview, and the SFFILM Rainin winner, Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell and Savannah Knoop. They are interested in transness, futurity, and the American South.\u00a0
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Kathy Huang<\/strong> is a documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles whose work explores issues of identity and belonging around the world, from transgender women searching for love in Indonesia to African migrants making their way in China. My Uncle the Fugitive is her first foray into personal, investigative storytelling.\u00a0\u00a0
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Immy Humes<\/strong> is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who explores social and political issues of race, gender, and class through the prism of real stories about unconventional and complicated people. A native and lifelong New Yorker, she is currently working on a portrait of the late great NYC filmmaker Shirley Clarke.
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Christine Mladic Janney<\/strong> is an award-winning filmmaker and media anthropologist. A Sociocultural Anthropology PhD, she has conducted research in and about Peru for over 10 years. Her latest project is a film about Nora de Izcue, Peru\u2019s first woman film director, and Nora\u2019s influence on Peruvian and Latin American cinema.
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Zack Khalil<\/strong> is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, currently based in Brooklyn, NY.\u00a0 His work centers indigenous narratives in the present\u2014and looks towards the future\u2014through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. He is a core contributor to New Red Order, a public-secret society dedicated to expanding Indigenous agency.\u00a0
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Jackson Kroopf <\/strong>is a filmmaker and educator from Los Angeles. His films explore auto-mythology, healing through creative expression, and radical approaches to collaboration. He works in both scripted and documentary, but usually somewhere in between. He is currently at work on his debut, hybrid feature on the art of survival.
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Marlene McCurtis<\/strong> is a documentary producer and director. She has directed series for A&E, The Discovery Channel, and NatGeo. Wednesdays in Mississippi is her first documentary feature film. Marlene has directed several short films and is an alum Fellow of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab.
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Carmen Oquendo-Villar<\/strong> studied film in NYU and in Harvard University, where she also obtained a PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures. Her filmography includes: Boquita, Mizery, Camil, Carmelo and The Needle, all engaging with transgender communities in Latin America. She’s a Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellow completing Todas Las Flores, her current documentary project.
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Marlo Poras<\/strong> is a documentary filmmaker whose work has aired on HBO and PBS. Her films Mai\u2019s America, Run Granny Run, and The Mosuo Sisters have traveled to festivals worldwide and won numerous awards, including two Audience Awards for Feature Documentary at SXSW and Best Feature Documentary from the IDA.\u00a0
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LA-based Cleveland native Ainslee Alem Robson<\/strong> is an award-winning Ethiopian-American director, writer and media artist, and current Sundance \u2018Art of Practice\u2019 Fellow. She crafts emancipatory narratives as forms of resistance to historic erasures of Africa and Blackness. Robson\u2019s directorial debut, Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR (2020) premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.\u00a0
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Tsanavi Spoonhunter <\/strong>is a Northern Arapaho and Northern Paiute nonfiction film director, producer and writer. Spoonhunter holds a Master of Journalism degree from the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on documentary film. She is a 2022 Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellow, First People\u2019s Fund Fellow and SFFilm FilmHouse Resident.
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Yuko Torihara<\/strong> is a Tokyo-born filmmaker, actor, photographer, producer based in NYC.\u00a0
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Kevin D. Wong<\/strong> is a Bay Area-based director, editor, and producer.\u00a0 He was a 2016 BAVC National Media Maker fellow and is currently an SFFilm Filmhouse resident.\u00a0 His short\u2019s have won several awards including the Loni Ding award for social justice documentary, played numerous festivals and been distributed by PBS.\u00a0
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Funding for the Humanities Sustainability Fellowships has been provided by NEH through the American Rescue Plan<\/a>, which is providing economic relief to a wide swath of Americans. Firelight Media<\/a> and the Independent Television Service<\/a> are also launching parallel initiatives that will greatly expand the nonfiction field\u2019s humanities-based work.\u00a0
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Sundance Institute<\/strong>
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sunda<\/a>n<\/a>ce Collab<\/a>, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from each other and Sundance Advisors and connect in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported and showcased such projects as Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), CODA, Flee, Passing, Clemency, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Zola, On the Record, Boys State, The Farewell, Honeyland, One Child Nation, The Souvenir, The Infiltrators, Sorry to Bother You, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Hereditary, Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, The Big Sick, Mudbound, Fruitvale Station, City So Real, Top of the Lake, Between the World & Me, Wild Goose Dreams<\/em> and Fun Home<\/em>. Join Sundance Institute<\/a> on Face<\/a>b<\/a>ook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, Twitter<\/a> and YouTube<\/a>.
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About the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH):<\/strong>
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at\u00a0www.neh.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pilot Program Directs Individual Support to Pandemic-Affected Nonfiction Storytellers The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the names of the mediamakers selected for the new Humanities Sustainability Fellowship, a year-long program providing 20 U.S.-based under-resourced nonfiction mediamakers whose work and livelihood have been grossly affected by the pandemic with direct, unrestricted stipends to supplement their income.… Continue reading Meet the 20 Mediamakers Selected For The New Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellowship<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[194],"class_list":["post-15241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sundance","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}