Documentary Lab
Firelight Media
DEADLINE: June 13, 2022 at 11:59 pm ET
INFO: Firelight Media’s flagship Documentary Lab seeks out and develops emerging filmmakers of color who make artful and innovative nonfiction films. The 18-month Documentary Lab provides filmmakers with customized mentorship from prominent leaders in the documentary world, as well as funding, professional development workshops, and networking opportunities.
Firelight Media uses the Documentary Core Application. Along with your written application, you must submit a work sample (for projects in Production) or a rough cut (for projects in Post-Production). Your work sample or rough cut must be no less than 10 minutes and no longer than 30 minutes in duration.
The deadline for submissions is June 13, 2022 at 11:59PM ET. Under no circumstances will we accept late submissions. The Firelight Documentary Lab supports filmmakers from racially and ethnically under-represented communities in the United States who make artful and innovative documentary films that take risks, and provide new narratives about the most pressing issues of our time. Firelight will consider all types of documentary projects - historical, investigative, personal, vérité, and experimental.
We strongly suggest writing your application in a Word document prior to applying. Please be sure to save your document then copy and paste your responses into the online application.
ELIGIBILITY:
Only the director of the film is eligible to apply and enter the program. We can accept co-directors if they meet all eligibility requirements. If you’re applying with your co-director, please indicate that in your application. We cannot accept more than 2 directors per project.
Filmmaker must be from a racially and ethnically underrepresented community and be residing in the United States, Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories.
The project must be a long-form/feature-length documentary; the Lab does not accept short documentaries, series, or fiction projects of any kind.
Film must be a work-in-progress. We accept films from early production through production or post-production. We do not accept films in pre-production or completed films.
Filmmaker must be an emerging documentary filmmaker (working on their first or second feature length documentary).
Filmmaker cannot submit a student film to the lab.
Firelight Media accepts applications from filmmakers who identify as people of color based in the United States regardless of their citizenship status. At the moment, we do not accept filmmakers who are based internationally for this program.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact: doclab@firelightmedia.org
firelightmedia.submittable.com/submit
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Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series
Reel Sisters
DEADLINE: June 20, 2022
INFO: Reel Sisters, the first Oscar Qualifying Film Festival for narrative shorts devoted to women filmmakers, is seeking films and web series directed, written or produced by women of color. Shorts, features, animation, works-in-progress, narratives, documentaries and experimental works are eligible.
The festival accepts all genres but is making a special call for films celebrating family and community! Filmmakers will have their original works viewed at the 25th Annual Reel Sisters Film Festival from October 22-23, 2022 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn! Other venues will be announced.
AWARDS: Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series will present cash awards to several category winners in our 2022 season! Winners of our Best Short ($1,000), Best Director ($500), Reel Sisters Best Spirit Award ($300) and Best Animation ($150) will be the recipients of the awards.
There will be more categories announced later in the season — stay tuned!
filmfreeway.com/ReelSistersoftheDiasporaFilmFestival
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Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase
DEADLINES:
Earlybird: June 24, 2022
Regular: July 15, 2022
Late: August 5, 2022
INFO: The Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase is an annual film festival held in El Paso, Texas, which celebrates short films made by women and nonbinary filmmakers from around the world, most especially women of color from border communities. Created in 2016, the festival is run by a collective of six women filmmakers from the U.S.-Mexico border region. Femme Frontera has been featured in Variety Magazine, Texas Monthly magazine, and Remezcla. In 2018, the Showcase was listed as one of the top film festivals for female filmmakers.
The Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase, a 1.5 hour program, goes on tour each year and has screened at the following locations:
Echo Park Film Center Los Angeles, CA, Relativity School Los Angeles, CA, Southwestern University Georgetown, TX, Indie Grits Film Festival Columbia, SC, UWM Milwaukee, WI, 516 ARTS Albuquerque, NM, Cine Las Americas Austin, TX, San Diego, CA, Art Theater Champaign, IL and Cine Festival San Antonio, TX.
Though priority will be given to filmmakers who were born, live, and/or created their short films in El Paso, TX, Las Cruces, NM, Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and their surrounding communities, FFFS welcomes short film submissions made by all women and non-binary filmmakers, most especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), Migrant, Mexican, Mexican-American, Transfronterizx, and/or LGBTQIA filmmakers from around the world.
RULES:
Open to shorts under 20 minutes in length.
Projects must be DIRECTED by WOMEN and NON-BINARY filmmakers ONLY. Any genre accepted. Priority will be given to stories told by immigrants, people of color, the LBGTQ community, and most especially films that take place along border regions around the world.
filmfreeway.com/FemmeFronteraFilmmakerShowcase
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2022 ANNUAL BLACK LIST LAB
The Black List
DEADLINE: July 17, 2022
INFO: The Black List will invite six to eight promising non-professional writers as identified by the Black List to a month-long feature program in September 2022. The program will begin virtually and conclude at an in-person, intensive writers workshop in Los Angeles, CA from September 22-27, 2022 (COVID-permitting). All writers involved in the Lab will workshop one feature screenplay through one-on-one sessions with each screenwriting mentor and in peer workshops. The program will also include attendance at several story-related events with professional screenwriters, executives, producers, lit agents and managers.
The selection process will work like this: Up to 15 writers will be invited, based on the strength of their scripts as determined by the Black List, to submit a one-page personal statement and professional resume. From those submissions, select writers will be chosen to interview, via Zoom, and 6-8 writers will be selected by the Black List to participate in the Lab.
LAB DEADLINES:
Submission Period Opens January 5, 2022
Evaluations Deadline (optional)* June 1, 2022
Submission Period Closes July 17, 2022
Short List Writers Notified July 18, 2022
Personal Statements Due July 25, 2022
Interviews August 2-3, 2022
Final Participants Notified August 5, 2022
Lab Begins (Virtually) September 6, 2022
In-Person Program on September 22-27, 2022
* In order for new script evaluations to qualify for consideration for the Lab, they must be purchased by midnight on the Evaluations Deadline. Please note, purchase of an evaluation is not required for consideration to participate in the Feature Lab. We strongly encourage having your script evaluated.
TRAVEL AND ACCOMMODATIONS:
Air Travel (coach class round trip flights within the continental United States (if available and if used)), ground transport to and from the airport in Los Angeles and all Lab events, and accommodations (room and tax only)* will be provided by the Black List. Meals will also be provided. The Lab is a residential program.
If you are accepted into the Lab, you will be required to board in the provided accommodations for the duration of the program and, if air travel is required, must be available to be flown to Los Angeles from a major airport within the continental United States.
*Participants must be able to provide proof of vaccination (including boosters per current CDC guidelines) and willing to test for COVID-19 infection prior to arriving at the in-person portion of the program.
SLOAN FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP:
Writers are also available to opt in to the 2022 Sloan Foundation Fellowship.
The Black List’s 2022 Sloan Foundation Fellow at the Annual Black List Feature Lab will be a science- and technology-focused writer with a science-rooted feature screenplay. Mentoring opportunities for the Sloan Fellow will continue throughout the year following the Lab. Writers will have the opportunity to be considered for this fellowship by selecting the “Sloan Foundation Fellow” option during the opt-in process. Writers applying for the Sloan Fellowship are encouraged to have a science advisor for the project. Scripts that are selected for the short list will be asked to submit the name and title of the advisor, a brief description of their scientific area of expertise, and a statement that he/or she has read the script and attests that it is accurate. Writers are encouraged to submit this information in advance of the short list announcement as well.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.
Sloan’s Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with top film schools in the country, supported screenplay development programs, and has helped develop over 30 feature films including Michael Almereyda’s Tesla, Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s Radium Girls, Thor Klein’s Adventures of a Mathematician, Jessica Oreck’s One Man Dies a Million Times, Logan Kibens and Sharon Greene’s Operator, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, and Matthew Brown‘s The Man Who Knew Infinity. The Foundation’s book program includes support for Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures, which became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017 and a social and cultural milestone.
For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org or follow the Foundation at @SloanPublic on Twitter and Facebook.