18 Nominations for the IDA Documentary Awards!

The IDA Documentary Awards recently announced the nominees for the 39th IDA Documentary Awards. We are proud to have 18 nominations and 3 shortlisted films within the Chicken & Egg Pictures community! The awards will be presented virtually on December 12. Congratulations and good luck to all of the nominees.

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Against the Tide | dir. & prod. Sarvnik Kaur | prods. Koval Bhatia, Quentin Laurent | Nominated for Best Feature Documentary and Best Director

QUEER FUTURES project How to Carry Water | dir. Sasha Wortzel | prods. Colleen Cassingham, Jess Devaney, Anya Rous | Nominated for Best Short Documentary

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Milisuthando | dir. Milisuthando Bongela | prod. Marion Isaacs | Nominated for Best Feature Documentary, Best Director, and Best Writing

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Q | dir. & prod. Jude Chehab | Nominated for Best Feature Documentary and Best Editing

2022 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient Margreth Olin’s Songs of Earth | dir. & prod. Margreth Olin | Nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Original Music Score

Project: Hatched 2023 participant Suddenly TV | dir. & prod. Roopa Gogineni | prods. Reem Haddad, Trevor Snapp, Fiona Lawson-Baker | Nominated for Best Short Documentary

2020 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient Maite Alberdi’s The Eternal Memory | dir. & prod. Maite Alberdi | prods. Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue | Nominated for Best Editing

QUEER FUTURES | dirs. Brit Fryer, Lindsey Dryden, Noah Schamus, Sasha Wortzel, Twiggy Pucci Garçon | prods. Jess Devaney, Anya Rous, J Wortham, Colleen Cassingham | Nominated for Best Short-Form Series

From the AlumNest

Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court | Nominated for Best Multi-Part Documentary
dir. & prod. Dawn Porter
prods. Vinnie Malhotra, Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project | Nominated for Best Feature Documentary and Best Original Music Score
dirs. & prods. Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster

King Coal | Nominated for Best Cinematography
dir. & prod. Elaine McMillion Sheldon
prods. Shane Boris, Diane Becker, Peggy Drexler

The U.S. and the Holocaust | Nominated for Best TV Feature or Mini-Series
dir. Lynn Novick, Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein

Shortlist Shoutouts

QUEER FUTURES project The Script | dirs. Brit Fryer, Noah Schamus | prods. Jessica Devaney, Colleen Cassingham | Shortlisted for Best Short Documentary

Project: Hatched 2023 participant Twice Colonized | dir. Lin Alluna | prods. Emile Hertling Péronard, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Stacey Aglok, Bob Moore | Shortlisted for Best Feature Documentary

AlumNest project How We Get Free | dirs. Geeta Gandbhir, Samantha Knowles | prods. Kathleen Lingo, Sweta Vohra, Jess Devaney | Shortlisted for Best Short Documentary

Post written by Communications Intern Tess Caldwell

13 Emmy Nominations from the Nest!

Chicken & Egg Pictures sends a massive congratulations to the two supported and 11 AlumNest films that received nominations for the 44th Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards. The honors will be presented live in two ceremonies, with Documentary Categories taking place on Thursday, September 28, 2023.

The Janes

dir. Tia Lessin, Emma Pildes

prod. Emma Pildes, Daniel Arcana, Jessica Levin

A photograph of 5 women wearing swimsuits and shades, in a sunny day in the'70s. — Still from *The Janes*

The Janes is a Project: Hatched 2022 finalist nominated for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, Best Documentary, Outstanding Research: Documentary, Outstanding Direction: Documentary.

Apart

dir. & prod. Jennifer Redfearn

prod. Tim Metzger

Still from Apart. Tomika and Amanda in the prison yard — Still from *Apart*

Apart is a 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee nominated for Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary.

From the AlumNest

American Reckoning
dir. & prod. Yoruba Richen, Brad Lichtenstein
Nominated for: Outstanding Historical Documentary

Art & Krimes by Krimes
dir. & prod. Alysa Nahmias
prod. Amanda Spain, Benjamin Murray
Nominated for: Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary

Body Parts
dir. Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
prod. Helen Hood Scheer
Nominated for: Outstanding Music Composition

Delikado
dir. & prod. Karl Malakunas
prod. Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala, Michael Collins, Marty Syjuco, Laura Nix
Nominated for: Outstanding Investigative Documentary

How to Change your Mind
dir. Lucy Walker, Alison Ellwood
Nominated for: Outstanding Graphic Design and Art Direction: Documentary

Lincoln’s Dilemma
dir. Jacqueline Olive, Barak Goodman
Nominated for: Outstanding Graphic Design and Art Direction: Documentary

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
dir. Geeta Gandbhir
prod. Jess Devaney
Nominated for: Outstanding Research Documentary, Outstanding Editing: Documentary

The Flagmakers
dir. & prod. Cynthia Wade, Sharon Liese
prod. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Carolyn Bernstein, Mark Gordon, Ryan Harrington, Jenna Segal
Nominated for: Outstanding Short Documentary

The U.S. and the Holocaust
dir. Lynn Novick, Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein
Nominated for: Outstanding Research Documentary

TikTok, Boom
dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya
prod. Danni Mynard, Ross Dinerstein
Nominated for: Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary

Wuhan Wuhan
dir. Yung Chang
prod. Diane Quon, Donna Gigliotti, Peter Luo
Nominated for: Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary

37 Words
dir. & prod. Dawn Porter, Nicole Newnham
Nominated for: Outstanding Research Documentary

Post written by Communications Intern Tess Caldwell

Lynn Novick: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 2

Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen Nest-supported women and gender non-conforming filmmakers. For more Dozen Days of Filmmakers, see here.

Lynn Novick has been making documentaries about American history for nearly thirty years. A director and producer, she has been a principal collaborator of Ken Burns since the early 1990s. Together they have been responsible for more than 60 hours of programming and some of the most critically acclaimed and top-rated documentary films and series that have aired on PBS, such as The Vietnam War, an immersive 18-hour epic that aired on PBS in the fall of 2017.

Lynn Novick. Photo courtesy of Rahoul Ghose/PBS.

Other credits include Prohibition, The Tenth Inning, and The War. In 1998, Novick was director and producer (with Burns) of the two-part biographical documentary Frank Lloyd Wright, for which she received a Peabody Award. The film was shown at the Sundance, Telluride, Edinburgh, and Seattle Film Festivals.

Novick directed the Nest-supported project College Behind Bars, a documentary series four years in the making which follows a handful of ambitious and inspiring incarcerated students struggling to earn degrees in one of the most rigorous liberal arts college programs in America—the Bard Prison Initiative.

Lynn Novick College Behind Bars: The Bard Prison Initiative — Production still from College Behind Bars, directed by Lynn Novick.

In the four part miniseries, the students debate and discuss American history and mathematics, philosophy and science, Moby Dick and King Lear, DuBois and Arendt, and simultaneously navigate the difficulties and cruelties of prison life and attempt to come to terms with their pasts. College Behind Bars asks several essential questions: What is prison for? Who in America has access to educational opportunity? Can we have justice without redemption? It aired on PBS in November of 2019 and is currently available to stream on the PBS website.

Nest-supported Filmmakers Take Home Three News and Documentary Emmy® Awards

Winners of the 39th Annual News and Documentary Emmy®
Awards were announced last night at a ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City. We were thrilled to see three Chicken & Egg Pictures-supported filmmakers receive Emmys for their powerful documentary projects.

Solitary, directed by 2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient Kristi Jacobson, received the Outstanding Investigative Documentary award (HBO Documentary Films).

Solitary investigates an invisible part of the American justice system: the use of isolation and segregation in US prisons, commonly known as solitary confinement. With unprecedented access inside a prison tackling the issue head on, the film explores this divisive issue through the experiences of those on both sides of the bars.

Heroin(e), directed by 2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient Elaine McMillion Sheldon, received the Outstanding Short Documentary award (Netflix).

“Once a bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia has become the epicenter of America’s modern opioid epidemic, with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Hollow) shows a different side of the fight against drugs—one of hope.”*

Chicken & Egg Pictures did not directly support Heroin(e), but supported Elaine during her Breakthrough year. Check out Elaine’s newest film on the subject, Recovery Boys (also on Netflix streaming).

The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick received the Outstanding Research award (PBS).

“Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film.”**

Chicken & Egg Pictures did not support The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick but is supporting Lynn Novick’s project College Behind Bars: The Bard Prison Initiative, currently in production.

We would also like to congratulate all of our friends at PBS, who received a whopping seven Emmy awards last night, as well as all of the incredible nominees and winners at the News and Documentary Emmy® Awards.

*Synopsis from the Recovery Boys website.

**Synopsis courtesy of PBS.

Chicken & Egg Pictures announces support of criminal justice projects

Chicken & Egg Pictures was pleased to announce today our support of two additional projects focusing on criminal justice in the United States, joining a cohort of films currently supported by the organization that address the issue. 6X9: An Immersive Experience of Solitary Confinement and College Behind Bars will both receive grants from the organization.

The Guardian’s 6X9: An Immersive Experience of Solitary Confinement (Francesca Panetta and Lindsay Poulton) is the first virtual reality project supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures. It is being funded through the organization’s new Impact & Innovation Initiative, which empowers women filmmakers to explore the new world of immersive and digital storytelling through online and interactive shorts, web series, and other cross-platform projects aimed at creating social impact.

College Behind Bars, directed by Lynn Novick, looks at a group of incarcerated men and women who are taking advantage of the Bard Prison Initiative to pursue a college degree while serving their sentences.

Chicken & Egg Pictures recognizes the magnitude of the criminal justice and mass incarceration crisis in the United States, and over its ten years has supported numerous films that address the issue from multiple perspectives.

6X9 and College Behind Bars join five current projects supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures that focus on various aspects of criminal justice, both in the United States and around the world. These projects include Cocaine Prison (Violeta Ayala), The Return (Kelly Duane de la Vega and Katie Galloway), Out of Mind (Kristi Jacobson), Sons And Daughters Of The Incarcerated (Denali Tiller), and Southwest Of Salem (Deborah S. Esquenazi).

“We’re very proud to be putting our support behind these projects that tackle one of the most pressing issues in the United States today,” said Chicken & Egg Pictures Executive Director Jenni Wolfson. “Even though the U.S. represents just 5% of the world’s population, we are responsible for 25% of inmates around the globe. Chicken & Egg Pictures believes firmly in the power of film to expose the systematic injustices surrounding mass incarceration, inhumane conditions, and miscarriages of justice. These storytellers address this matter with humanity, innovation, and purpose, ensuring that it stays at the top of our national conscience and contributes towards lasting change.”