Chicken & Egg Pictures has announced the recipients of the second Breakthrough Filmmaker Award, which includes a $50,000 unrestricted grant and a year-long creative support and mentorship program. Founded in 2005, Chicken & Egg is dedicated to supporting women nonfiction filmmakers whose work inspires social change.
The recipients of this year’s Breakthrough Filmmaker Award are Geeta Gandbhir (“Prison Dogs”), Kirsten Johnson (“Cameraperson”), Penny Lane (“NUTS!”), Grace Lee (“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”), and Dawn Porter (“Trapped”).
“The Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Filmmaker Award responds to the reality that only a few women non-fiction directors in the U.S. are able to work full-time as independent storytellers,” a press release from the nonprofit org details. “The program recognizes and elevates five experienced women directors with unique voices who are poised to reach new heights and to continue to be strong filmmaker-advocates for urgent issues and creative visions.”
If you’re wondering how these award-winning filmmakers got to where they are now, take note. We ask all of the women directors who participate in our festival interview features to share their advice for fellow female filmmakers. Lane urged women directors to build a community. “You need your peers,” she explained. “My ‘professional network’ is more than what those words sound like. It has become the most important family I’ll ever have — a group of mostly women who are the greatest support, inspiration, advice (and fun) ever.” Gandbhir (and her “A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers” co-director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy) emphasized that “Persistence is key. Do not take ‘no’ for an answer from anyone — be it in regards to access, funding, anything!” Porter advised, “Figure out what you want to say and keep asking yourself if you are saying it. Be decisive but also respectful of the people you are collaborating with, and pick people you enjoy working with.”
“After a successful inaugural year, we welcome this new cohort of talented women into the program,” said Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “Through our investment in these filmmakers, Chicken & Egg Pictures affirms its commitment to supporting women from a diversity of backgrounds, with powerful voices, who are driving change through storytelling. They are creative risk-takers who have made their mark and are ready to push the boundaries even further and continue to bring to the forefront critical issues and stories.”
Recipients of the Chicken & Egg Pictures 2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award “were chosen through an international, confidential nomination process.”
Chicken & Egg Pictures has awarded over $5.2 million in grants, as well as mentorship and creative support, to over 220 films, and projects supported by the organization have won numerous awards, including Oscars and Emmys.
Johnson’s “Cameraperson” is one of 15 titles on the Academy’s shortlist for Best Feature Documentary. Oscar nominations will be announced January 24.
Check out bios of the recipients of the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award below, courtesy of Chicken & Egg. For more information about the award, head over to Chicken & Egg Pictures’ site.
Geeta Gandbhir
Geeta began her career in editing. As an editor, she has won two Emmy Awards. Her latest feature documentary, Prison Dogs, which she co-directed with Perri Peltz, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Her film with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, A Journey of A Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; won the Jury award for Best Documentary at The Bentonville Film Festival; and won the Humanitarian Award at the River Run Film Festival. She co-created and was a director on a series about race for The New York Times Op-Docs entitled The Conversation, which won an Online Journalism Award. Her film with Ms. Peltz, Remembering the Artist, Robert De Niro, Sr., for HBO, premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently finishing a feature documentary on a bomb disposal unit in Pakistan.
Kirsten Johnson
Drawing on footage she shot for a myriad of documentary directors over the last 25 years, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; won the Cinema Eye Awards for Best Documentary, Best Editing, Best Cinematography; and the National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award. Widely reviewed as one of the top films of 2016, it received awards at nine international festivals, was nominated for the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the IDA Documentary Awards, the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, and is currently shortlisted for an Academy Award. Johnson’s short film, The Above, was nominated for 2016 Best Short Film Award by the IDA. Her interest in image-making, collaboration with documentary filmmakers, and the ethical dilemmas faced by camerapeople around the world is ongoing.
Penny Lane
Penny Lane’s most recent feature, NUTS!, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize for Editing. Her debut feature documentary, Our Nixon, premiered at the 2013 Rotterdam International Film Festival, had its North American premiere at SXSW, won the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was selected as the closing night film at New Directors/New Films. Lane was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2012 and “Most Badass” at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009. Film festival screenings span the independent and experimental film worlds, including Sundance, Rotterdam, Images, IMPAKT, Hot Docs, Full Frame, CPH:DOX, and Oberhausen. She is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University.
Grace Lee
Grace Lee is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose work explores questions of history, race, politics, and community. She directed American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, which won six festival audience awards and aired on the POV documentary series. Other directing credits include The Grace Lee Project, Janeane From Des Moines, the Emmy-nominated Makers: Women and Politics, and Off the Menu: Asian America. Lee’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Center for Asian American Media, Film Independent, and the Sundance Institute, where she was a Women at Sundance Fellow. She recently co-founded the Asian American Documentary Network and is currently in production on Ktown92, an interactive documentary that explores the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots through the eyes of the greater Koreatown community.
Dawn Porter
Dawn Porter is a documentary filmmaker whose first feature, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award in 2013 and later broadcast on HBO. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. Dawn’s other films have appeared on PBS, OWN and the Discovery Channel. In 2015, Porter interviewed President Barack Obama for Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper. Dawn’s latest feature project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws regulating abortion clinics in the South. Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. In 2016, Porter was named to Variety’s “10 Documakers to Watch” and received the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence at DOC NYC’s Visionaries Tribute. She also recently created a short film for The New Yorker Presents, a digital series executive produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney.
