#BIPOC
Lifetime Greenlights “Black Girl Missing” From Star and Exec Producer Garcelle Beauvais
Lifetime is partnering with the Black and Missing Foundation on a project that will highlight disparity among missing persons cases. A press release announced that the network has greenlit...
Sundance 2023 Women Directors: Meet Rebecca Landsberry-Baker – “Bad Press”
Rebecca Landsberry-Baker is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program grantee, Ford Foundation JustFilms grantee, and a 2022 NBC Original Voices Fellow. She is a 2022 Gotham Documentary Feature...
Sundance 2023 Women Directors: Meet Michèle Stephenson – “Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”
Michèle Stephenson is a filmmaker, artist, and author who pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells...
Trailer Watch: “Murder in Big Horn” Spotlights Missing Indigineous Women
“Since colonization, Native women have been targeted,” we’re told in a new trailer for “Murder in Big Horn,” a three-part Showtime docuseries investigating the...
Documentary Filmmakers Camille Billops and James Hatch to Receive Worldwide Theatrical Retrospective
The first worldwide theatrical retrospective of groundbreaking filmmakers Camille Billops and James Hatch is on the way. The late collaborators and married couple “explored African American...
Research: Inclusion Initiative Finds “Hiring Women of Color Was the Exception, Not the Rule” in 2022
“The pace of change has been slow for women directors,” a new report from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative concludes. Titled “Inclusion in the...
Queer Common Spaces: Podcast Picks
Find friends who don’t judge you. Find friends who understand you. Find friends who listen to you, help you grow, and commiserate with you when the future seems uncertain. All these qualities...
Whose Lens is it Anyway?: Podcast Picks
While we’ve come a long way with on-screen representation, much of mainstream television and film fails to offer relatable, authentic representation for all. That’s the beauty of...
Trailer Watch: “Descendant” Spotlights the Legacy of the Last Slave Ship to Arrive in U.S.
“You have this type of history, your ancestors are going to always talk to you,” we’re told in a new trailer for Margaret Brown’s “Descendant.” The Netflix doc...
TIFF 2022 Women Directors: Meet Angela Wanjiku Wamai – “Shimoni” (“The Pit”)
Angela Wanjiku Wamai works as a film editor in Nairobi, Kenya. She was recently awarded best film editor by the Women in Film Awards – Kenya. In 2018 she wrote “I Had to Bury...
TIFF 2022 Women Directors: V.T. Nayani – “This Place”
V.T. Nayani is a director, producer, and writer. She is a recipient of the UN Women Yvonne M. Hebert Award for filmmakers and photographers. Most recently, she completed her residency in the...
Finally, Some Real Talk: Podcast Picks
With bad news hurtling toward us on the daily, we need an escape, and we need to be seen. When media, positive or negative, revolves around a singular demographic, it can make anyone on the margins...
Trailer Watch: Leah Purcell Braves the Australian Outback in “The Legend of Molly Johnson”
Described by writer, director, and star Leah Purcell as a “story about a woman who will go to great lengths to protect the ones she loves,” “The Legend of Molly Johnson” takes...
Pick of the Day: “Fanny: The Right to Rock”
An adoring fan letter to trailblazers who have yet to receive their due, “Fanny: The Right to Rock” shines a well-deserved spotlight on a history-making rock band from the ’70s....
Lisa Cortés Signs First-Look Deal with Blue Ant Studios, Slate Includes Docuseries About Women in Hip-Hop
Lisa Cortés is going into business with Blue Ant Studios. The Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning producer and director inked a new first-look deal with the production company that will see her...
Jacqueline Olive & Stanley Nelson Team Up for Doc About Pepsi’s Historic All-Black Sales Team
Two award-winning filmmakers are teaming up to tell the story of the first all-Black sales team at a major U.S. corporation. Jacqueline Olive (“Always in Season”) and Stanley Nelson...
Leya Hale on Tackling the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Epidemic in “Bring Her Home”
Leya Hale comes from the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Diné Nations. She is a producer for Twin Cities PBS and is best known for her first feature documentary, “The People’s...
Apply Now: Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab
Hillman Grad Productions, Lena Waithe and Rishi Rajani’s’ production and development company, is set to “provide opportunities for marginalized creatives to connect, grow, and...
Fox Maxy Named as Sundance Institute’s 2022 Merata Mita Fellow
Fox Maxy (Payómkawichum and Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians) has been named as the recipient of the 2022 Merata Mita Fellowship, an annual fellowship designed to support Indigenous...
Trailer Watch: A Native American Boxer Goes Undercover to Find Her Sister in “Catch the Fair One”
The winner of the Audience Award at last year’s edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, “Catch the Fair One” tells the story of Kaylee (Kali Reis), a Native American boxer determined...
“America ReFramed” to Launch 10th Season with World Premiere of “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America”
A portrait of a Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human rights activist will kick off the 10th season of “America ReFramed.” The award-winning documentary series from WORLD Channel and...
Apply Now: Season 2 of Lena Waithe and Indeed’s Rising Voices Filmmaking Program
Lena Waithe and her Hillman Grad Productions shingle have, along with employment site Indeed, renewed Rising Voices for a second go-round. According to a press release, applications are now being...
Apply Now: Reel Sisters Microbudget Film Fellowship for Women of Color
Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series is offering women of color a chance to win $5,000 to produce a web series pilot or short film. Applications for the Reel Sisters...
Kathleen Collins to Receive Posthumous Icon Tribute at Gotham Awards
Kathleen Collins is set to receive the inaugural Icon Tribute posthumously during the 2021 Gotham Awards Ceremony. A press release announced that the event will honor the poet, playwright, writer,...
Pick of the Day: “Beans”
“You need to be able to stand up for what’s important to you,” a 12-year-old Mohawk girl is told in “Beans.” Tracey Deer’s coming-of-age drama tells the story of Tekehentahkhwa,...
Trailer Watch: Danis Goulet Uses Sci-Fi to Explore the Effects of Colonialism in “Night Raiders”
“As long as we have one piece of land, they will always come for us,” we’re told in a new trailer for “Night Raiders.” Set in 2043 in post-war North America, the...
Series Adaptation of Judy Blume’s “Forever” from Mara Brock Akil in the Works at Netflix
Kelly Fremon Craig’s not the only one with a Judy Blume adaptation on the way. We’ve been looking forward to the “Edge of Seventeen” writer-director’s upcoming take on...
Trailer Watch: Tracey Deer Revisits the Oka Crisis Though the Eyes of a Mohawk Girl in “Beans”
“You need to be able to stand up for what’s important to you,” a 12-year-old Mohawk girl is told in a new trailer for “Beans.” Set against the backdrop of the Oka...
Sydney Freeland to Helm Netflix Native American Basketball Pic “Rez Ball”
Sydney Freeland has lined up her third feature. Deadline reports that she’ll follow up 2014’s “Drunktown’s Finest” and 2017’s “Deidra & Laney Rob a...
Kai Yu Wu & Cherie Dimaline Team Up for “Empire of Wild,” Horror Series Rooted in Indigenous Folklore
Kai Yu Wu is bringing “Empire of the Wild” to the small screen with the help of the horror novel’s author, Cherie Dimaline. The duo are working with Fabel Entertainment on a series...
Bentonville 2021: 71% of Competition Lineup Directors Are Women, 75% BIPOC/AAPI, 33% LGBTQIA+
Bentonville Film Festival (BFF) has announced its 2021 program, and the Geena Davis-led event promises to be an inclusive celebration of talent on both sides of the camera. Seventy-one percent of...
Quote of the Day: Queen Latifah Accepts BET Lifetime Achievement Award, Emphasizes “Black Is Beautiful”
“Be Black. Black is beautiful,” Queen Latifah emphasized while accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2021 BET Awards. The Grammy and Emmy-winning multi-hyphenate used her time...
Tracee Ellis Ross and Michaela Angela Davis Team Up for “Hair Tales” Docuseries at OWN and Hulu
Tracee Ellis Ross and Michaela Angela Davis are swapping “Hair Tales.” The pair are set to exec produce and narrate a docuseries that will see the real-life friends leading “a...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Suzanne Joe Kai – “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres”
Suzanne Joe Kai received two Emmy Award nominations and was named Best Woman News Reporter while a broadcast journalist at San Francisco’s NBC affiliate KRON-TV. She worked at KCBS Radio (CBS) and...
Michelle Zauner Adapting “Crying in H Mart” for the Big Screen
“Crying in H Mart” is getting the film treatment. MGM label Orion Pictures snagged rights to Michelle Zauner’s New York Times best-selling memoir in a “competitive...
Trailer Watch: “The Legend of the Underground” Tackles LGBTQ Discrimination in Nigeria
“I want to encourage billions and zillions of people, telling them that you have rights. You know why? Because you’re human,” says one of the characters featured in “The...
Trailer Watch: Mary J. Blige Reflects on the Legacy of “My Life” in New Doc
Mary J. Blige is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her most influential work. The nine-time Grammy winner and Oscar-nominated singer and actress reflects on her 1994 album “My Life” in...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Brooke Swaney – “Daughter of a Lost Bird”
“Daughter of a Lost Bird” is Brooke Swaney’s first feature documentary. She recently made the Blacklist’s Inaugural Indigenous List with “Tinder On The Rez” along with...
Hot Docs Winners: “One of Ours,” “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy,” & More
The 28th edition of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival has come to a close. The fest announced the winning films in this year’s official competition and the recipients of...
Trailer Watch: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers Explores the Opioid Crisis in “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy”
“We can’t sit back and expect things to change without doing the work,” we’re told in a trailer for “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy.” Currently screening...
Danis Goulet Sci-Fi “Night Raiders” Lands at Samuel Goldwyn Films, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers Stars
Danis Goulet’s feature debut has secured distribution. Samuel Goldwyn Films snagged U.S. rights to “Night Raiders,” a dystopian sci-fi story about a Cree woman that made its world...
Trailer Watch: Nancy Buirski Revisits “A Crime on the Bayou” and Exposes Institutional Racism
An examination of justice, allyship, and activists working together to dismantle institutional racism, Nancy Buirski’s “A Crime on the Bayou” tells the story of Gary Duncan, a Black...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Yasmine Mathurin – “One of Ours”
Yasmine Mathurin is a Haitian-Canadian writer, director, and award-winning podcast producer. She produced the audio-fiction podcast “The Shadows,” which won Gold in the fiction category at the...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers – “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy”
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a writer, director, producer and actor. She’s a member of the Kainai First Nation — Blood Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy — as well as Sámi from Norway. Her...
Trailer Watch: “In Our Mothers’ Gardens” Celebrates the Strength and Resiliency of Black Women
“Like most Black women, I would say that the women in my family are complicated,” says one of the characters featured in “In Our Mothers’ Gardens.” Set to premiere May 6...
Outfest Fusion QTBIPOC Film Fest Announces 2021 Lineup: “Ma Belle, My Beauty,” “Unapologetic,” & More
Outfest has released the lineup for this year’s Outfest Fusion QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Film Festival. Set to run April 16-20 in Los Angeles, the hybrid...
Quote of the Day: Marsai Martin Explains Her “No Black Pain” Project Rule
Marsai Martin was just recognized at the NAACP Image Awards for her work on-screen but the history-making “black-ish” star is also blazing trails behind the scenes. The youngest person to...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Leah Purcell – “The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson”
Leah Purcell is a proud Goa-Gungarri-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland, Australia. She is an internationally acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, director, novelist, actor, cultural icon, and...
Tracey Deer’s Oka Crisis Coming-of-Age Drama “Beans” Lands at FilmRise
“Beans” has secured distribution ahead of its European premiere at the Berlinale. FilmRise scored U.S. rights to Tracey Deer’s coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of the...
Apply Now: Lena Waithe, Hillman Grad Prods., and Indeed’s Rising Voices Filmmaking Initiative
Lena Waithe, her company Hillman Grad Productions, and employment site Indeed are teaming up to “discover, invest in, and share stories created by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)...
IDA Doc Awards Announce Shortlists for Best Feature and Best Short: “Time,” “Boys State,” & More
The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories at the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, which will be presented at a...