Chicken & Egg Pictures is ringing in the new year by naming the recipients of its 2020 Chicken & Egg Awards and introducing its newest programs, Project: Hatched and the Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant. A press release announced the news.
The Chicken & Egg Award, which “recognizes and elevates experienced documentary makers,” was presented to six filmmakers: Maite Alberdi, Tonje Hessen Schei, Nishtha Jain, Michelle Latimer, Mila Turajlić, and Kimberly Reed. The prize comes with a $50,000 unrestricted cash award, a year-long mentorship program, and support from Chicken & Egg’s creative team in the development of new doc projects.
Previous Chicken & Egg Award honorees include Julia Reichert (“American Factory”) and Nanfu Wang (“One Child Nation”).
Project: Hatched provides a $20,000 grant to directors as they prepare to premiere their film. $15,000 is for finishing funds, and $5,000 goes toward impact strategy development. “Participants also receive ten hours of mentorship focusing on festival premiere support, impact, and distribution strategy, and professional development,” the release notes.
The inaugural Project: Hatched films will all premiere at Sundance later this month: Shalini Kantayya’s “Coded Bias,” centering on researcher Joy Buolamwini’s discovery that artificial intelligence doesn’t recognize dark-skinned faces; “The Fight,” Elyse Steinberg, Eli Despres, and Josh Kriegman’s portrait of the ACLU lawyers pushing back against the Trump administration; and Anabel Rodríguez Ríos’ “Once Upon a Time in Venezuela,” following three women during the lead-up to Venezuela’s parliamentary elections.
“Chicken & Egg Pictures’ programs emphasize support for the filmmaker, not just their films. These two programs represent the range of support we provide: the Chicken & Egg Award focuses on helping filmmakers to break through to the next stages of their careers, and our newest program, Project: Hatched, is about helping them to bring their projects out into the world and to ensure their films have maximum impact,” said Lucila Moctezuma, Program Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “We are thrilled to begin working with this amazing slate of filmmakers who all have an incredibly exciting year ahead.”
“Coded Bias” also received the new Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant, which comes from Chicken & Egg’s partnership with impact leader the Fledgling Fund. The $20,000 grant is awarded to a “Project: Hatched recipient whose film and campaign strategy has the ability to shape national and international conversations around the world’s most pressing issues.” Another project will be presented with the grant later this year.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Chicken & Egg Pictures on their Project: Hatched program,” stated Diana Barrett, Fledgling’s founder and president. “It is our hope that the additional grant along with the program mentorship will catalyze robust strategies that will deepen the social impact of the selected projects.”
Established in 2005, Chicken & Egg supports women and nonbinary nonfiction filmmakers. The org has awarded over $7 million in grants and thousands of hours of creative mentorship to over 300 filmmakers.
Bios for the Chicken & Egg Award winners and project descriptions for the Project: Hatched recipients are below, courtesy of Chicken & Egg Pictures.
2020 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENTS
Maite Alberdi (CHILE)
Maite Alberdi is a Chilean director who has developed a particular style that is characterized by an intimate portrait of small worlds, and her renowned personal hallmark has made her one of the most important voices in Latin American documentaries. Her films The Lifeguard (2011), Tea Time (2014), I Am Not From Here (2016), and The Grown-Ups (2016) have received important international awards.
Tonje Hessen Schei (NORWAY)
Tonje Hessen Schei is an award-winning Norwegian independent filmmaker. Tonje is the director of iHuman (2019), Drone (2014), Play Again (2010), and Independent Intervention (2005). Her films have received international awards including the Cinema for Peace Award for the Most Valuable Documentary of the Year; The Golden Nymph Award; and Norway’s national film awards, the Amanda and Gullruten awards for best documentary. Tonje’s films have screened at the United Nations, European Union, Netflix, and major film festivals worldwide.
Nishtha Jain (INDIA)
Nishtha Jain is a multi-award-winning filmmaker best known for her films Saboot (2019), Gulabi Gang (2012), Lakshmi and Me (2007) and City of Photos (2004). Her films are self-reflexive and explore the political in the personal. A recurring theme in her films is work or travail. She has received numerous international and national film awards including two Amnesty International Awards. Her films have been screened in over 250 international film festivals, art house cinemas and broadcast on TV networks. She’s a Fulbright Scholar (2019) and Film Independent Global Media Maker (2019).
Michelle Latimer (CANADA)
A Métis/Algonquin filmmaker, actor, and producer, Michelle Latimer’s goal is to use film and new media as a tool for social change. Most recently, she directed and produced the Indigenous resistance series Rise (Viceland), which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and won a Canadian Screen Award. Her latest film Nuuca premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Berlinale, and Sundance. Michelle’s Indigenous heritage informs her filmmaking perspective, and much of her work is dedicated to the pursuit of Indigenous rights and sovereignty.
Mila Turajlić (SERBIA)
Mila Turajlić is an award-winning director and archive scholar born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Her documentary The Other Side of Everything won 32 awards, including the prestigious IDFA Award for Best Feature-length Documentary. Her previous film Cinema Komunisto played at over 100 festivals and won 16 awards including the Gold Hugo for Best Documentary and the FOCAL Award for Creative Use of Archival Footage. In 2018, she was commissioned by MoMA to create archive-based video installations for their landmark exhibition on Yugoslav modernist architecture.
Kimberly Reed (UNITED STATES)
Kimberly Reed’s Dark Money, an award-winning selection at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, was promptly named one of Vogue’s 66 Best Documentaries of All Time, nominated for 4 Critics’ Choice Awards and the IDA Award for Best Documentary, and shortlisted for an Oscar. Prodigal Sons, the first documentary by a transgender filmmaker to be theatrically released, won 14 international awards. One of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” she is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
PROJECT: HATCHED 2020 RECIPIENTS
Coded Bias (The Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant recipient)
Director: Shalini Kantayya (UNITED STATES / INDIA)
Coded Bias explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence. The documentary aims to shine a light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy.
*Premiering at Sundance 2020
The Fight
Directors: Elyse Steinberg, Eli Despres, Josh Kriegman (UNITED STATES)
Seven days after Trump’s inauguration, his Muslim ban was a stunning assault on civil liberties—but it was even more extraordinary to watch ACLU lawyers fight back. Just thirty hours after the order was signed, attorneys emerged from a Brooklyn courthouse with fists raised high, triumphant at the court’s first check on the president’s power.
The Trump administration has since moved to expel transgender soldiers from the military, roll back voting rights, separate migrant children from their parents, block abortion access for undocumented teens, and reinstate the Muslim ban. But at each affront, an ACLU lawyer is fighting back. In this modern-day David vs Goliath story, we’ll watch these self-described “freedom nerds” struggle to stop an unpredictable adversary with unlimited resources.
The lawyers of the ACLU are now at the epicenter of the battle to constrain President Trump’s anti-constitutional impulses—even while protecting the most controversial free speech rights of his supporters. The Fight is the inside story of the human struggle at this moment of national crisis.
*Premiering at Sundance 2020
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela
Director: Anabel Rodríguez Ríos (VENEZUELA)
On Lake Maracaibo, beneath the mysterious silent Catatumbo lightning, the village of Congo Mirador is preparing for parliamentary elections. For streetwise local businesswoman and Chavist party representative Tamara, every vote counts, fought by all means. While for opposition-supporting teacher Natalie, politics is a weapon that is unsuccessfully attempting to force her from her job. And with her sharp eyes, little Yohanny sees her community sinking from sedimentation, her childhood and innocence with it. How can a small fishing village survive against corruption, pollution and political decay—a reflection of all the flaws of contemporary Venezuela?
*Premiering at Sundance 2020
Note: The parentheses next to the directors’ names indicate the directors’ country or countries of origin.
