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.

“As we face one of the most challenging times in modern history, with much collective grief and loss, we have the opportunity to honor and uphold our strength and legacy as a country of immigrants.”

Director Alexandra Codina launched the impact campaign for her Nest-supported film Paper Children (2017 (Egg)celerator Lab), including an op-ed published in The Miami Herald and a co-authored post with other activists in asylum and immigrant rights on Medium, both are calls to action to help protect asylum seekers and to speak out against proposed asylum regulations in the US. Read more here: 

The Miami Herald: This is the worst time yet to gut asylum protections for those fleeing persecution — Alexandra Codina

Medium: Asylum is a humanitarian issue. It has been corrupted by politics. — Alexandra Codina, Americans for Immigrant Justice, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and others 

Paper Children is available to stream on Youtube. 

Firelight Media’s “Beyond Resilience” Series Continues This Week

Loira Limbal, Senior Vice President for Programs at Firelight Media and 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee for Through the Night, will be featured on another Beyond Resilience panel Friday, July 17 at 2 pm ET. 

Beyond Resilience: The Black Gaze — Join Firelight Media for a conversation with Black filmmakers on how they are navigating the ubiquitous images of Black trauma in this moment, documenting Black life, and forging new cinematic languages, practices, and formal approaches.

The Beyond Resilience series is available on Firelight Media’s Youtube channel if you cannot make the live webinar. 

Ramona Diaz Premieres Trailer for A Thousand Cuts Announces Theatrical Run:

2018 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient Ramona Diaz premiered the trailer for A Thousand Cuts and announced a virtual theatrical run nationwide, via Deadline.

“As the United States goes through its own journey of civic unrest and social change, the Philippines is going through its own journey that is having a substantial political impact on the Asian archipelago and as seen in Ramona S. Diaz’s Sundance documentary A Thousand Cuts, which is set to open in theaters and in virtual theaters nationwide on August 7, the reverberations may have global consequences.“

Deadline: ‘A Thousand Cuts’ Trailer: Ramona S. Diaz’s Docu About Journalist Maria Ressa And Press Freedom In Duterte’s Philippines Sets Theatrical Run — Dino-Ray Ramos

The trailer for A Thousand Cuts is available to watch on Youtube.

Loira Limbal is an Afro-Latina filmmaker, activist, and DJ interested in the creation of art that affirms women of color and builds solidarity across communities. Her first film, Estilo Hip Hop, aired on PBS in 2009.

Limbal is currently directing Through the Night, a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider, whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, NY.

For the past decade, Limbal has dedicated herself to fusing arts and activism. She has worked at various community-based organizations in New York City including The Point Community Development Corporation, The Dominican Women’s Development Center, and Sista II Sista. In 2006, she founded The Reel X Project, a social justice and creative filmmaking space for young women of color in the Southwest Bronx.

Limbal received a B.A. in History from Brown University and is a graduate of the Third World Newsreel’s Film and Video Production Training Program. She has received awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Lisa Sullivan Fund.

Limbal is the Vice President and Documentary Lab Director at Firelight Media. She lives in the Bronx with her two children.

Through the Night is a participant of the 2018 Accelerator Lab.

Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.