Congratulations are so as: Chicken & Egg Pictures has introduced greater than $650,000 in new grants to eight recipients of its 2023 Chicken & Egg Award. Created to “recognize the reality that only a few women and non-binary nonfiction filmmakers in the U.S. and abroad are able to work full-time as independent storytellers,” the award gives chosen documentary filmmakers who’re at advanced-career phases with a $75,000 grant in addition to “a tailored year-long mentorship program that is targeted to the goals of each individual grant recipient,”per a press launch asserting the awardees.
The 2023 recipients are Angela Tucker (“Belly of the Beast”), Ilinca Calugareanu (“A Cops and Robbers Story”), Jeanie Finlay (“Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch”), Lisa Jackson (“How a People Live”), Nico Opper (“The F Word”), Rea Tajiri (“Wisdom Gone Wild”), Sabaah Folayan (“Whose Streets?”), and Sonia Kennebeck (“United States vs. Reality Winner”).
“The reality is that, even in 2023, it’s still incredibly difficult for women and non-binary people to make careers as independent storytellers. The numbers tell the tale: two-thirds of documentaries are helmed by men,” mentioned Jenni Wolfson, CEO of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “This chasm in representation means that men have an outsized role in telling the stories of who we are, and what’s important. Chicken & Egg Pictures is thrilled to play a role in righting this wrong, and to recognize the talent and contributions of these incredible filmmakers.”
Two finalists, Farida Pacha and Salomé Jashi, will obtain a $15,000 Chicken & Egg Award Finalist Development Grant for his or her initiatives.
You can discover extra details about the Chicken & Egg Award recipients under, courtesy of the press launch.
Angela Tucker (US)
Angela Tucker (she/her) is an Emmy® and Webby Award-winning filmmaker working in scripted and unscripted movie and tv, highlighting underrepresented communities in unconventional methods. Her current work consists of NYT Critic’s Pick Belly of the Beast (dir. Erika Cohn) and A New Orleans Noel, a Lifetime vacation movie starring Patti LaBelle. Her documentaries in manufacturing are The Inquisitor, about political icon Barbara Jordan, and Steam (working title), about historical and different well being therapies spanning the globe.
Ilinca Calugareanu (Romania/UK)
Ilinca Calugareanu (she/her) is a UK-based Romanian filmmaker. Her directing titles embody characteristic documentaries Chuck Norris vs Communism (Sundance, 2015), A Cops and Robbers Story (Doc NYC, 2020); and brief documentaries VHS vs. Communism (Op-Docs- The New York Times), Erica: Man Made (Guardian Documentaries) and The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo (Netflix, 2022). She is a Berlinale Talents Alumna, Chicken & Egg Pictures (Egg)celerator Lab Grantee, Sundance Institute’s National Geographic Fellow, and an SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grantee.
Jeanie Finlay (UK)
Jeanie Finlay (she/her) is one in every of Britain’s most distinctive documentary makers whose award-winning work for cinema and tv–made with metal and coronary heart–tells intimate tales for worldwide audiences.
Her credit embody movies for HBO and IFC, and 4 commissions for BBC Storyville, with works together with the (additional)peculiar being pregnant of a British trans man, and British Independent Film Awards (BIFA)-nominated, Seahorse; Emmy®-nominated documentary concerning the world’s greatest present, Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch; the story of the final document store in Teesside–SOUND IT OUT; the BIFA-nominated The Great Hip Hop Hoax; Panto!; and the BIFA-winning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King. Jeanie is at the moment underway on her tenth characteristic documentary.
Lisa Jackson (Canada)
Lisa Jackson (she/her) is an Anishinaabe filmmaker whose work has garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, a Webby Award nomination, and has screened at prime festivals together with Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale, and Hot Docs. Known for cross-genre work that expands narrative boundaries and covers subjects as various as catfishing, Indigenous languages, and lichen, she’s dedicated to Indigenous display screen sovereignty. In 2021, Lisa was acknowledged by the Documentary Organization of Canada with their prestigious Vanguard Award.
Nico Opper (US)
Nico Opper (they/them) is an Emmy®-nominated filmmaker based mostly in Oakland, California. They directed The F Word (2018), which was nominated for a Gotham Award and an IDA Award; Visitor’s Day (2016); and Off and Running (2010). They additionally produced Try Harder! (2021), which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Nico has been featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s annual “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40.”
Rea Tajiri (US)
Rea Tajiri (she/her) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and educator who creates installations, documentaries, and experimental movies. Her work situates itself in poetic, non-traditional storytelling varieties to encourage dialog and reflection round buried histories.
Tajiri’s work has acquired help from SimplyFilms/Ford Foundation, the Pew Fellowship within the Arts, and the Leeway Transformation Award. Additionally, she acquired a Rockefeller Media Fellowship and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. Her newest documentary Wisdom Gone Wild, screened within the International Competition at IDFA, and within the American Lives part at DOC NYC. It gained the Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary and Jury Award Honorable Mention for Best Feature Documentary on the 2022 Blackstar Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize from the San Diego Asian Film Festival because the Centerpiece Film, the Audience Award and Best Documentary Award on the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. Tajiri is an Associate Professor within the Film Media Arts Department at Temple University the place she teaches Documentary Film manufacturing.
Sabaah Folayan (US)
Through screenwriting, filmmaking, and public talking, Sabaah Folayan (she/they) ranges an optimistic but unflinching gaze on the pressing questions of our time.
Sabaah made her directorial debut on the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, with the feature-length documentary Whose Streets? Nominated for a Peabody Award, Critics Choice Award, Gotham Award, and NAACP Award, the movie chronicles the experiences of activists residing in Ferguson, Missouri when Michael Brown Jr. was killed. Whose Streets? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, broadcast for tv by POV, and is now streaming on Netflix.
In 2021, Sabaah wrote the collection finale of HBO’s Betty, a critically acclaimed comedy collection a couple of crew of younger feminine skate boarders in New York City. Her second documentary characteristic LOOK AT ME: XXXTENTACION premiered at SXSW 2022 and is now streaming on Hulu.
Sonia Kennebeck (Malaysia/Germany/US)
Sonia Kennebeck (she/her) is an award-winning director, producer, and investigative journalist. Her directing credit embody critically-acclaimed characteristic movies United States vs. Reality Winner (SXSW 2021), Enemies of the State (TIFF 2020), and National Bird (Berlinale 2016). Kennebeck acquired the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award, a Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, and an Emmy® nomination. She was acknowledged as one in every of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers and Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Additional details about Chicken & Egg Award Finalist Grant Recipients:
Farida Pacha (India)
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Farida Pacha (she/her) studied Anthropology and Sociology in Mumbai earlier than acquiring her MFA in filmmaking at Southern Illinois University. Her debut characteristic documentary, My Name is Salt (2013), has gained 35 worldwide awards together with the primary prizes at movie festivals in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Madrid, and Mumbai, in addition to the distinguished German Camera Prize. Her newest documentary Watch Over Me (2021) acquired the Grand Jury Documentary Award on the Movies that Matter Festival at The Hague and was nominated for The Robert and Frances Flaherty Award on the Yamagata International Film Festival.
In 2018, she acquired the IDFA Bertha Fund Europe and the Jan Vrijman Fund in 2008 and 2010.
Salomé Jashi (Georgia)
Salomé Jashi studied documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her movie Taming the Garden (2021) premiered at Sundance Film Festival and Berlinale Forum and was nominated for the European Film Awards. Her movie The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition and different festivals. Her earlier work Bakhmaro (2011) was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Her producing work How the Room Felt (2021) premiered at IDFA’s predominant competitors.
Salomé was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020. She is a member of European Film Academy and a co-founder of DOCA Documentary Association Georgia.