Fourteen supported filmmakers, as well as our Program Director Kiyoko McCrae and Board Members Félix Endara, Marjan Safinia, and Alex Simon, will participate in a four day event designed to provide a space for the field to hold constructive conversations, build lasting relationships, and tackle the ethical, creative, sustainability, production, and distribution challenges facing our growing community. Please take a look at the details below.

Playing with Reality: Staging Documentary

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 10:30 AM PDT

Panelists: Alison O’Daniel, Cecilia Aldorando, Theo Montoya
Moderator: Ela Bittencourt 

Surviving the Aftermath: Protecting Creative Expression

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 10:45 AM PDT

Panelists: Assia Boundaoui, Farihah Zaman, Anam Abbas 
Moderator: Aizzah Fatima 

Open Breakout Session: From Concept to Catalyst (with A-Doc and BGDM)

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 2:00 PM PDT

Panelists: Grace Lee, Farihah Zaman, Leo Chiang, Iyabo Boyd 
Moderators: Sonya Childress, Sahar Driver

Risky Business: Accessing Difficult Places

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 3:45 PM PDT

Moderators: Jennifer Petrucelli, Stephanie Jenkins, and Rachel Antell
Respondents: Dawn Porter, Jon-Sesrie Goff, and more to be announced

The Hot Seat

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 3:45 PM PDT

Panelist: Program Director Kiyoko McCrae, Mads K. Mikkelsen, Bryn Mooser, and Luis Ortiz
Moderator: Abby Sun

Delegation: Is There Independence Out There? (BFI Doc Society)

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 10:00 AM PDT

BFI Doc Society, in partnership with FWD-Doc, is hosting a virtual Delegation of six UK filmmakers, producers, and editors who identify as disabled, D/deaf, and/or neurodivergent. In this virtual discussion on the spirit of independence, filmmakers Ella Glendining, Lindsey Dryden, and other filmmakers will elaborate on what voice, audience, and success mean to them as disabled filmmakers, and how reframing “access” beyond accessibility can create and sustain space for radical new voices in the documentary industry. 

Disaster Preparation: Building Your Support System

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 10:15 AM PDT

Panelists: Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, Emily Mkrtichian, and Gema Allen Juarez
Moderator: Zara Meerza

Open Breakout Session: Trans Filmmaker Meetup

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 11:45 AM PDT

Moderator: Board Member Félix Endara
Panelists: Chelsea Moore, Moi Santos, seyi adebanjo, Cary Cronenwett

Workshop: Brands 101

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 11:45 AM PDT

Moderator: Board Member Alex Simon 
Facilitator: Brian Newman

Here’s What Really Happened: Your Fat Friend

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 2:00 PM PDT

Panelists: Jeanie Finlay, Suzanne Alizart 
Moderator: Keisha Knight

Worth Our Weight In Gold: Identifying Value in Your Production

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 2:15 PM PDT

Panelists: Tabs Breese, Chris Perez, Lexy Altman, and Asmae El Moudir
Moderator: Zeynep Güzel (Berlinale Talents Doc Station)

We Don’t Need to Reinvent the Wheel: Connecting to Audiences

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 4:00 PM PDT

Panelists: Elizabeth Woodward, Pulkit Datta, Lucas Rosant, Paula Ossandón
Moderator: Winnie Wang

Keynote: Kirsten Johnson

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 5:30 PM PDT

Kirsten Johnson is a 2017 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient

Collective Performance: Our Declaration of Independence

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 7:00 PM PDT

Panelists: Board Member Marjan Safinia, Maxine Franklin, Michelle Plascencia 

Game Show: What’s the Deal?

Thursday, April 18, 2024 11:15 AM PDT

Panelists: Daresha Kyi, Keith Wilson, Gary Kam, and Vinay Shukla
Moderator: Chase Whiteside (América)

Meet Our Team

Along with our Program Director Kiyoko McCrae, CEO Jenni Wolfson, COO Sarah Anderson, and Senior Program Manager Elaisha Stokes will be attending Getting Real. They will be attending panels and supporting our filmmakers. If you see them, please don’t hesitate to say hello! 

We are egg-tremely proud to see six Nest-supported filmmakers among Firelight Media Spark Fund’s 36 recipients. This one-time opportunity offers a $50,000 stipend to established, independent documentary filmmakers who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC) and whose work on humanities-themed projects was disrupted by the COVID-19 public health emergency.  
Congratulations to all the recipients!

2016 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Assia Boundaoui (The Feeling of Being Watched)

2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Débora Souza Silva (For our Children)

Nest-supported filmmaker Farihah Zaman (Remote Area Medical)

2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Grace Lee (American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs)

2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Michèle Stephenson

Nest-supported filmmaker Vaishali Sinha (Made in India)

We are sending an extra special congratulations to our Senior Creative Consultant Yvonne Welbon, who was also selected as one of the recipients.

Check out the full list of recipients and learn more about them with this link.

International Documentary Association (IDA) revealed their annual IDA Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short categories.

Congratulations to these five Nest-supported films which are shortlisted for this top honor:

American Factory
Directed by Julia Reichert (2016 Chicken & Egg Award) and Steven Bognar
Produced by Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar, Jeff Reichert, and Chicken & Egg Pictures Co-Founder Julie Parker Benello

Hail Satan?
Directed by Penny Lane (2017 Chicken & Egg Award)
Produced by Gabriel Sedgwick

One Child Nation
2017 (Egg)celerator Lab 
Directed by Nanfu Wang (2018 Chicken & Egg Award) and Jialing Zhang
Produced by Nanfu Wang, Jialing Zhang, Christoph Jörg, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, and Carolyn Hepburn

Roll Red Roll
Directed by Nancy Schwartzman
Produced by Nancy Schwartzman, Steven Lake, and Jessica Devaney

The Feeling of Being Watched
2016 (Egg)celerator Lab
The Whickers / Chicken & Egg Pictures Award
Directed by Assia Boundaoui
Produced by Jessica Devaney

At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we’re wishing all the shortlisted filmmakers good luck! IDA will announce the final 10 nominees for Best Documentary Feature on Wednesday, October 23, with the awards ceremony on Saturday, December 7.

Want to gear up for the IDA Awards nominations announcement? Check out these streaming links for the Nest-supported films mentioned above: Roll Red Roll on Netflix, The Feeling of Being Watched on POV, One Child Nation on Amazon Prime, Hail Satan? on Hulu, and American Factory on Netflix.

Egg-cellent news from POV, television’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films, as they announced yesterday the slate for their Season 32 broadcast. Nine out of POV’s sixteen feature films this season are helmed by women directors, and six of those films are Nest-supported projects or by Nest-supported directors.

At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we are so proud to support women filmmakers whose voices are changing the world, one television broadcast at a time. Make sure to set your DVR or stream on pov.org or amdoc.org in order to catch these powerful documentaries:

Roll Red Roll, directed by Nancy Schwartzman will be the opening film for the new season, broadcasting June 17 on all PBS stations and across its platforms and pov.org and amdoc.org.

In small-town Ohio, at a pre-season football party, a horrible incident took place. What transpired would garner national attention and result in the sentencing of two key offenders. As amateur crime blogger Alex Goddard uncovers disturbing evidence on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, documenting the assault of a teenage girl by members of the beloved high school football team, questions linger around the collusion of teen and adult bystanders. Roll Red Roll explores the complex motivations of both perpetrators and bystanders in this story, unearthing the attitudes at the core of their behavior. The Steubenville story acts as a cautionary tale of what can happen when adults look the other way and deny that rape culture exists. With unprecedented access to police documents, exhibits and evidence, the documentary feature unflinchingly asks: “why didn’t anyone stop it?”

On Her Shoulders, directed by 2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Alexandria Bombach (2018 SXSW LUNA/Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient) will broadcast July 22.

This empowering documentary presents 23-year-old Nadia Murad, a Yazidi genocide survivor determined to tell the world her story. Determined advocate and reluctant celebrity, she becomes the voice of her people and their best hope to spur the world to action.

Inventing Tomorrow, directed by 2018 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Laura Nix will broadcast on July 29.

Meet passionate teenage innovators from around the globe who are creating cutting edge solutions to confront the world’s environmental threats – found right in their own backyards – while navigating the doubts and insecurities that mark adolescence. Take a journey with these inspiring teens as they prepare their projects for the largest convening of high school scientists in the world, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Grit, directed by Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander, will broadcast on September 9.

Grit is the story of a huge, toxic mudflow in Indonesia widely believed to be caused by shoddy drilling practices. The mud volcano has been erupting violently for the past eight years, burying 17 villages and permanently displacing 60,000 people. Grit follows ordinary Indonesians seeking justice for this disaster during a national election in which one presidential candidate has promised restitution—and the other has not.

The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui (2016 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee) will broadcast on October 14.

In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers hundreds of pages of declassified FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11—code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance.

Blowin’ Up, directed by 2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Stephanie Wang-Breal will broadcast on October 21.

Blowin’ Up looks at sex work, prostitution, and human trafficking through the lens of New York State’s criminal justice system. The film captures the growing pains of our nation’s first human trafficking intervention court in Queens, New York, and how we define trafficking and prostitution from many different perspectives: the criminal justice system, the social welfare system, and, most importantly, the women and girls who are at the center of it all.

Changing Same, directed by Impact & Innovation Initiative grantees Michèle Stephenson (also a 2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Joe Brewster, is on the second season of POV’s Shorts program, following On Her Shoulders.

Chicken & Egg Pictures is supporting the immersive, room-scale virtual reality experience based on the short film, Changing Same: The Untitled Racial Justice Project.

Check your local listings for broadcast times and more information.

Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, AlJazeera, VICE, CNN and was the recipient of a first place Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Her directorial debut, The Feeling of Being Watched, was a participant in the 2016 Accelerator Lab and a recipient of The Whickers Chicken & Egg Pictures Award.

In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance.

In 2018, The Feeling of Being Watched had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, was an official selection at Hot Docs, and received the Audience Award at Camden International Film Festival,  the BlackStar Film Festival, Boston GlobeDocs Film Festival, and the Regent Park Film Festival. The film also won jury awards for Best Documentary Feature and James Lyons Editing Award For Documentary Feature at the Woodstock Film Festival. Assia is a fellow with the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is iterating her most recent work, The Inverse Surveillance Project,  a machine learning fueled sequel to The Feeling of Being Watched.

Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.

The 2018 Harrell Award for Best Documentary Feature went to On Her Shoulders, directed by Alexandria Bombach (2018 SXSW LUNA / Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient) *

This empowering documentary presents 23-year-old Nadia Murad, a Yazidi genocide survivor determined to tell the world her story. Determined advocate and reluctant celebrity, she becomes the voice of her people and their best hope to spur the world to action.

The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui (participant of the 2016 Accelerator Lab and recipient of The Whickers Chicken & Egg Pictures Award) received the Audience Award.

In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance.

Congratulations Alexandria and Assia!

For more about the other Nest-supported projects at the 2018 Camden International Film Festival, see our previous blog post.

* Chicken & Egg Pictures did not support On Her Shoulders but supported director Julia Alexandria Bombach through the SXSW LUNA / Chicken & Egg Pictures Award.

In a press release from CIFF, Senior Programmer Samara Chadwick stated, “Programming at parity celebrates the contributions of the many formidable women in the field, while also emphasizing the fact that, in a century of documentary filmmaking, we’ve largely known one dominant perspective. […] At CIFF we’re drawn to directorial approaches from outside the canon, and we value all the creative voices and cinematic languages that have been otherwise underrepresented.”

At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we applaud the push for gender parity from the Camden International Film Festival.

See a full itinerary for Nest-supported films, filmmakers, and friends at CIFF below.

Points North Pitch, Saturday Sep. 15 at 10 AM at the Camden Opera House, including a pitch from 2018 Diversity Fellows Initiative grantee Robie Flores for her project The In Between.

Skywards, directed by Eva Weber (Black Out, 2007), Saturday Sep. 15 at 10 AM at The Strand Theatre in Rockland.

Survivors, co-directed by Arthur Pratt, Banker White, Anna Fitch and Barmmy Boy, Saturday Sep. 15 at 12:30 PM at the Rockport Opera House.

A Cure for Fear (Series), directed by Lana Wilson (The Departure and After Tiller), Saturday Sep. 15 at 3:30 PM at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland*

The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui (2016 Accelerator Lab grantee and The Whickers award winner), Sunday Sep. 16 at 12:30 PM. Assia will also be speaking on the Documentary as Co-Creation panel at 3:30 PM on Saturday Sep. 15 at High Mountain Hall in Camden.

On Her Shoulders, directed by Alexandria Bombach (2018 SXSW LUNA / Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient), Sunday Sep. 16 at 5 PM at The Strand Theatre in Rockland.*

Blowin’ Up, directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal, Sunday Sep. 16 at 5:30 PM at the Rockport Opera House.

Post by 2018 Communications Intern Morgan Lee Hulquist. 

These include providing financial assistance by way of grants, as well as creative guidance and support through mentorship workshops, industry connections, and peer support. Participants will receive a two-part grant for the production of their film, which they will develop over the course of the 12-18 month program.

“These filmmakers and projects represent a microcosm of the over 200 filmmakers whom Chicken & Egg Pictures has supported over the last ten years. Our goal is to nurture their talent by providing them with a yearlong creative lab program, a grant of up to $35,000, and a community of women filmmakers who can support and learn from one another,” said Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “We selected these women filmmakers because we believe not only that they are going to make artful and compelling films, but because we believe that these stories must be told and will contribute to changing how we see and respond to the world around us.”

2015 ACCELERATOR LAB PARTICIPANTS:

 A GUANGZHOU LOVE STORY
Director: Kathy Huang
In China, an unprecedented surge in African migration has led to a rise in marriages between Chinese women and African men. A Guangzhou Love Story captures the love, heartache, and real life challenges of Afro-Chinese couples attempting to forge a meaningful future together in the face of racism and xenophobia.

BY A THREAD
Director: Rina Castelnuovo & Tamir Elterman
By A Thread tells the story of Muhammad (Muhi), a Palestinian child from Gaza and the son of a Hamas activist wanted by Israel. As a newborn, Muhi is transferred to Israel for treatment of a life-threatening condition. Months turn into years and Muhi, now six, has lived his whole life in the Israeli hospital, confined for security reasons to its premises with his grandfather. The film explores Muhi’s contradictory world in which he is treated, raised, and saved by his people’s enemy, while his parents remain in Gaza.

By A Thread is an inside look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s inescapable presence in everyday life and how it shapes those like Muhi who are unwillingly drawn into it.

CUENCA
Director: Isabel Alcántara
After a spate of mysterious illnesses and deaths, a community in Mexico discovers its water is radioactive. What unfolds is a story of resilience, conviction and the lies we tell ourselves about our dwindling resources.

FLY AWAY
Director: LC Cohen
Fly Away is a film about memory, identity, and growing up told through the eyes of seven siblings and their mother. Five of the children are on the autistic spectrum and as they move through adolescence, an event of the past keeps drawing them back. Combining observational footage with a rich archive of home movies and songs, the film is both a detective story and coming-of-age tale, exploring universal themes of memory, family, and love.

LAWYERS
Director: Hikaru Toda
A story of love, family, and rights, Lawyers is a snapshot of Japan in transition. Fumi and Kazu are life partners, both professionally and privately: they run the first and only law firm in Japan run by an openly gay couple. From activists to artists to vulnerable young people, we see a cross section of Japanese society pass through Kazu and Fumi’s office – their clients and their cases reveal Japan’s changing social landscape and the diversity too often overlooked in its homogenous society. Lawyers also follows Kazu and Fumi’s quest to raise a family. Faced with a legal system that doesn’t allow adoption by same sex couples and having seen firsthand the realities of institutionalized youths, they have begun the process of registering as foster parents.

ROLL RED ROLL
Director: Nancy Schwartzman
The story of a football town divided, Roll Red Roll is a true crime thriller examining sexual assault in small town America.

RULES TO LIVE BY
Director: Hope Litoff
A reflection on the life and suicide of Ruth Litoff, a successful artist, a pathological liar, and the filmmaker’s sister. By looking back on Ruth’s incredible highs and lows, bursts of creative genius, depression, secrets, and lies, a vivid portrait will emerge of the brilliant woman the filmmaker is not sure she ever really knew. This is her attempt to understand what happened.

SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE INCARCERATED
Director: Denali Tiller
Growing up is full of challenges, but for Tre, Maison, and Giana those challenges reach beyond friends, school, and middle school crushes. Sons and Daughters of the Incarcerated tells the story of three children whose fathers are in prison, and a formerly incarcerated mother who is now working to stop the cycle. How do the stigmas of incarceration shape their identities as they struggle to find their places in their communities and the world? What will it take to break the cycle of violence, crime, and imprisonment that pulls so hard on these kids’ lives and millions more like them?

THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED
Director: Assia Boundaoui & Alex Bushe
The Feeling of Being Watched is the first documentary film to tell the story of the War on Terror from the perspective inside an Arab-American neighborhood. Since the early 90’s, people in Bridgeview, IL have stayed quiet about their deep suspicions of living under government surveillance, and no one has ever dug into why the surveillance may have begun. Until now. This film brings to light an under-represented human story and follows the filmmakers as they investigate what really happened, and may still be happening, in Bridgeview.

WHOSE STREETS?
Director: Sabaah Jordan & Damon Davis
A first-hand look at how the murder of one teenage boy became the last straw for a community under siege. Whose Streets? is a story of love, loss, conflict, and ambition; the journey of everyday people turned freedom fighters, whose lives intertwined with a burgeoning national movement for black liberation. This is a film for all of America – it provides insight into the unseen reality of racism, the role of media in conflict, state-sanctioned violence, and militarized policing – but at its core it is Ferguson’s story, it is our cry of “enough is enough.”