September 26, 2019 3:43 pm
Kartemquin Films and the Community Film Workshop of Chicago are thrilled to announce award-winning filmmaker Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation, Hooligan Sparrow) will provide the keynote speech at the 2019 Diverse Voices in Docs (DVID) graduation on October 12 at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago. The event will include exclusive previews of each of the eight in-progress works by the current DVID fellows. The graduation is free and open to the public. RSVP here.
Applications are now open for the 2020 Diverse Voices in Docs fellowship. Eight Midwest filmmakers will be selected from those who apply before the November 1 deadline. Apply here: kartemquin.com/diversevoices.
Diverse Voices in Docs (DVID) is a nine-month professional mentorship program for Midwestern documentary filmmakers of color, organized by Kartemquin Films and the Community Film Workshop of Chicago. Past fellows and projects that have participated in the program include Bing Liu (Academy Award-nominated director of Minding the Gap), Kelly Richmond Pope (director of All The Queen’s Horses, winner of the HBO Spotlight Award for Best Documentary at the 2018 Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival), and Jiayan “Jenny” Shi (director of Finding Yingying, winner of the 2018 Paley DocPitch, now a Kartemquin co-production due for release in 2020).
The 2019 DVID graduates include Shiraz Ahmed (Alive in Detroit), Aisha Allen (The Cost of Time), Joua Lee Grande (Spirited), Milton Guillén (On the Move), Sebastián Pinzón-Silva (La Bonga), Shawn Taylor (Gone Too Soon: America’s Missing Black Men), Cai Thomas (360 Nation), and Christine Varisse (17 Days).
2020 will be the eighth year of the successful program, which has helped over 80 documentary filmmakers of color advance their projects through mentorship and skill-sharing since launching in 2013. This is the first year in which $50,000 of grants will be awarded to graduates of the program, with $20,000 going to 2019 fellows, and $30,000 towards DVID alumni. Kartemquin will announce the grant recipients on October 1, and the grantees will be celebrated on October 29th at the 2019 Kartemquin Empowering Truth Benefit Luncheon.
“Access to seed funding for in-progress documentary projects is often limited to filmmakers located on the coasts. . These grants are designed to build on the momentum of our DVID program and provide crucial support after the nine-month fellowship is over,” said Jolene Pinder, Kartemquin Executive Director.
Renewed funding in 2019 for DVID was provided by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Field Foundation of Illinois, and The Chicago Community Trust.