Meet our 2021 Summer Interns!
Chicken & Egg Pictures welcomes two eggs-tra special Summer Interns: Lindsay Allen and Mariana Sanson. Each of them brings a passion for nonfiction filmmaking, which permeates through their work. We greatly appreciate everything they bring to our team.
Lindsay Allen
Program Intern
As Program Intern, Lindsay assists our Program Team on various projects, including the (Egg)celerator Lab and Project: Hatched program. She also works closely with our Filmmaker Engagement Manager Jaad Asante and Program Assistant Iva Dimitrova to coordinate with AlumNest filmmakers and provide logistical support for virtual programming. Lindsay graduated from Temple University in 2020 with a BFA in Film Directing and is a writer, director, and producer with experience in short-form narratives. As a filmmaker, she is specifically interested in creating opportunities on screen for individuals living with disabilities in accurate and positive portrayals.
Mariana Sanson
Communications Intern
As Communications Intern, Mariana assists our Communications Coordinator and External Relations Director by writing, copy editing, proofreading, fact checking, and designing communications materials. She joined Chicken & Egg Pictures after finishing an MA in Media Studies at The New School, where she also collaborated with the Documentary Studies program and focused her studies on nonfiction media. She worked at Ambulante Documentary Film Festival for six years, as well as at Morelia International Film Festival. Mariana is a firm believer in the power of documentary as a tool for social change and the creation of collectivity.
Post by 2021 Summer Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
Belly of the Beast Receives Four News and Documentary Emmy® Noms!
Nominations for the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards were announced today by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS): Project: Hatched 2020 grantee Belly of the Beast received FOUR nominations! Also nominated were two films by Chicken & Egg Award recipients and one produced by our Co-founder & Board President Julie Parker Benello.
Belly of the Beast (Project: Hatched 2020)
dir. Erika Cohn
prods. Nicole Docta, Christen Marquez & Angela Tucker
Nominated for Outstanding Direction: Documentary, Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Best Documentary, Outstanding Editing: Documentary
AlumNest Films
The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show
Nominated for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary
dir. Yoruba Richen (2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient)
prods. Valerie Thomas & Joan Walsh
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Nominated by Outstanding Research: Documentary, Outstanding Historical Documentary, Outstanding Lighting Direction and Scenic Design
dir. Dawn Porter (2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
prods. Erika Alexander & Ben Arnon
Special Congratulations
A special congratulations to our Co-Founder & Board President Julie Parker Benello, producer of Athlete A (dirs. Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk, prods. Serin Marshal, Julie Parker Benello & Jen Say). The film was nominated for Best Documentary and Outstanding Investigative Documentary.
Check out the full nomination list here. The awards for Documentary Categories will be presented on Wednesday, September 29, 2021. Post by 2021 Summer Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
We’re Back to the Cinemas at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival!
The Tribeca Film Festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a return to the cinemas in 2021. The festival runs from Wednesday, June 9 to Sunday, June 20 with programming that can be accessed in person and virtually.
At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we are looking forward to the shared experience of film, as New Yorkers head back to the movies again. Viewers within the US can access Tribeca’s virtual programming through $15 online stream tickets.
We are also thrilled to let you know that films slated to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, but postponed due to COVID-19, will also screen at this year’s edition. Granted films featured in the festival include four (Egg)celerator Lab grantees from 2018 and 2019, one Project: Hatched grantee, one Chicken & Egg Award recipient film, three films from the AlumNest, and one VR project. Learn more about the films below, and get your tickets here.
Ascension, dir. Jessica Kingdon
Ascension examines the contemporary “Chinese Dream” through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth. In cinematically exploring the aspiration that drives today’s People’s Republic of China, the film plunges into universal paradoxes of economic progress.
World Premiere │ Tribeca Documentary Competition │ 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab
Enemies of the State, dir. Sonia Kennebeck
An American family becomes entangled in a bizarre web of secrets and lies when their hacker son is targeted by the U.S. government, making them all Enemies of the State.
US Premiere │ 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab
Pray Away, dir. Kristine Stolakis
Former leaders of the “pray away the gay” movement contend with the aftermath unleashed by their actions, while a survivor seeks healing and acceptance from more than a decade of trauma.
World Premiere │ 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab
Through the Night, dir. Loira Limbal
To make ends meet, Americans are working longer hours across multiple jobs. This modern reality of nonstop work has resulted in an unexpected phenomenon: the flourishing of 24-hour daycare centers. Through the Night is 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.
New York Premiere │ 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab
Landfall, dir. Cecilia Aldarondo
Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall examines a ruined world at the brink of transformation, spinning a cautionary tale for our times.
Project: Hatched 2020
Stateless, dir. Michèle Stephenson
Through the grassroots campaign of electoral hopeful Rosa Iris, director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary reveals the depths of racial hatred and institutionalized oppression that divide Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
2016 Chicken & Egg Award
Simple as Water, dir. Megan Mylan
A look at war and displacement through the lens of parenthood from Megan Mylan, Academy-Award winning director of Lost Boys of Sudan and Smile Pinki. This feature documentary unfolds as a sequence of cinematic short stories revolving around Syrian families living in Turkey, Greece, the US, Germany, and Syria. Each chapter is an intimate portrait of parents—often mothers alone—as they work to rebuild their children’s lost sense of security and possibility. It is a story that is both urgent and timeless.
World Premiere │ 2018 Grant
VR Experience
The Changing Same: Episode 1, dirs. Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster & Yasmin Elayat
AlumNest Films
The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show, dir. Yoruba Richen (2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
Selected for the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival
Women In Blue, dir. Deirdre Fishel (AlumNest for Care)
Selected for the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival
Untitled Dave Chappelle Documentary, dirs. Julia Reichert (2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Steve Bognar
Egg-citing news! This world premiere will be Tribeca’s closing night film.
See you at the cinema! Post by 2021 Summer Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
2019 Sundance Festival Winners
A huge congratulations to Chicken & Egg Pictures-supported films and filmmakers who won big at Sundance this year:
One Child Nation
Dirs. Nanfu Wang & Jialing Zhang
Grand Jury Prize – US Documentary Competition
Always in Season
Dir. Jacqueline Olive
Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency – US Documentary Competition
American Factory
Dir. Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar
Directing – US Documentary Competition
It was a big weekend for these incredible filmmakers in more ways than one, with Amazon acquiring One Child Nation and Netflix acquiring American Factory. And a special congratulations to former Nest grantees Rachel Lears (dir. of Knock Down the House – US Documentary Competition Audience Award), Alma Har’el (dir. of Honey Boy – US Dramatic CompetitionSpecial Jury Award for Vision and Craft); and Laura Nix (executive producer of Sea of Shadows – World Cinema Documentary Audience Award).
We couldn’t be prouder of our Nest friends. Learn more about American Factory, Always in Season, and One Child Nation—and the amazing women that made them—through these reads:
‘One Child Nation’: How Nanfu Wang Defied China to Expose Its Dark Side – Indiewire
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Nanfu Wang – “One Child Nation”– Women and Hollywood
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Jacqueline Olive – “Always in Season”– Women and Hollywood
Sundance 2019: Always in Season an exceptional documentary on communities of memory, history of lynchings – The Utah Review
‘American Factory’: Sundance Review – Screen Daily
Sundance: Netflix Nabs ‘American Factory’ Doc for $3 Million – The Hollywood Reporter
The Nest at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival
Chicken & Egg Pictures is coming to the 2019 Sundance Film Festival! In addition to seeing our filmmakers soar, we are delighted that they are contributing to a festival where 40% of selected films are directed by one or more women, and 53% percent of the directors eligible for the festival’s top prize are women.
The following Nest-supported projects and filmmakers from our Accelerator Lab and Breakthrough Filmmaker Award programs, along with several directors from our AlumNest, will be celebrating their world premieres.
Always in Season, directed by Jacqueline Olive (2018 Accelerator Lab)
As the trauma of a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present, Always in Season follows relatives of the perpetrators and victims in communities across the country who are seeking justice and reconciliation in the midst of racial profiling and police shootings. In Bladenboro, NC, the film connects historic racial terrorism to racial violence today with the story of Claudia Lacy who grieves as she fights to get an FBI investigation opened into the death of her seventeen-year-old son, Lennon Lacy, found hanging from a swing set on August 29, 2014. Claudia, like many others, believes Lennon was lynched.
One Child Nation, directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang (2017 Accelerator Lab)
How much control does a person have over their own life? In China, state control begins before a child is even born.
Director Nanfu Wang is also a recipient of the 2018 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award.
American Factory*, directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award)
In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.**
Hail Satan*, directed by Penny Lane (2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award)
A look at the intersection of religion and activism, tracing the rise of The Satanic Temple: only six years old and already one of the most controversial religious movements in American history. The Temple is calling for a Satanic revolution to save the nation’s soul. But are they for real?**
In addition, the following films directed by Nest-supported filmmakers will be featured at the festival:
Knock Down the House, directed by Rachel Lears (director of Nest-supported film The Hand That Feeds with Robin Blotnick)
Shooting the Mafia, directed by Kim Longinotto (director of Nest-supported film Dreamcatcher)
The Great Hack, directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim (Jehane is the director of the Nest-supported film The Square)
The Sundance Film Festival will run from January 24 to February 3, 2019. Congratulations to all, and we will see you in Park City!
*Chicken & Egg Pictures did not directly support American Factory and Hail Satan but supported director Julia Reichert and director Penny Lane during their Breakthrough years.
**Synopses courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.
The Nest in the Inaugural DOC NYC 40 Under 40
The DOC NYC Film Festival recently released their inaugural 40 Under 40 List, sponsored by Topic Studios, honoring documentary talents under the age of 40. Of the 40 artists selected, over half are women. Congratulations to all on this honor!
Assia Boundaoui, director of The Feeling of Being Watched (2016 Accelerator Lab and recipient of The Whickers Chicken & Egg Pictures Award)
Lyric R. Cabral, director of (T)ERROR and The Rashomon Effect (2017 Accelerator Lab)
Nausheen Dadabhoy, director of An Act of Worship (2018 Diversity Fellows Initiative)
Jessica Devaney, co-director of Love the Sinner (2016 Impact and Innovation Initiative), and producer of the Nest-supported films Always in Season, The Feeling of Being Watched, Roll Red Roll, and Speed Sisters.
Sabaah Folayan, director of Whose Streets? (2016 Accelerator Lab). Whose Streets? premiered on PBS on July 30.
Lana Wilson, director of The Departure and After Tiller
Farihah Zaman, co-director of Remote Area Medical
And congratulations to our other Nest friends!
- Erin Casper, editor of Roll Red Roll (dir. Nancy Schwartzman)
- Mariam Dwedar, camera operator for On Her Shoulders (dir. Alexandria Bombach, 2018 SXSW LUNA/Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient)
- Danielle Vega, co-producer of Cameraperson (dir. Kirsten Johnson, 2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award)
Check out more DOC NYC news from the Nest.
Chicken & Egg Pictures-Supported Filmmakers Win at CIFF
The 2018 Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) hosted its annual awards ceremony on Sunday, September 16, and we are excited to announce that two Nest-supported filmmakers took home the top prizes at the awards!
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.
Nest-supported Nominees for The Grierson Awards
The Grierson Trust commemorates the pioneering Scottish documentary maker John Grierson. Each year, the trust celebrates documentary filmmaking from the UK and around the world with the British Documentary Awards, more fondly known as The Griersons.
We are honored to announce that Chicken & Egg-supported projects Kingdom of Us and Strong Island were nominated this year.
Kingdom of Us, directed by Lucy Cohen, was nominated for Best Single Documentary – Domestic and Best Cinema Documentary.
Kingdom of Us 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.
Strong Island, directed by Yance Ford, was nominated for Best Single Documentary – International.
Set in the suburbs of the black middle class, Strong Island seeks to uncover how—in the year of the Rodney King trial and the Los Angeles riots—the murder of the filmmaker’s older brother went unpunished. The film is an unflinching look at homicide, racial injustice, and the corrosive impact of grief over time.
The Griersons will take place on the evening of Monday, November 5 at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. In the meantime, both Kingdom of Us and Strong Island are available to stream on Netflix.
Congratulations Yance and Lucy and good luck!
Gender Parity at the 2018 Camden International Film Festival
The 2018 Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) will take place in Camden, Rockport, and Rockland, Maine from September 13 to 16. Founded in 2005, CIFF is a festival focused exclusively on documentary film, and this year, we were egg-static to see that half of the selections across every category are directed by women.
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.
And our very own Eggspert advisor Cara Mertes will be moderating The Public Sphere panel, Saturday Sep. 15 at 1:30 PM at High Mountain Hall.
*Chicken & Egg Pictures did not directly support Skywards, A Cure for Fear, or On Her Shoulders but did support their directors in past projects.
Post by 2018 Communications Intern Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Penny Lane at the Open City Documentary Film Festival
The eighth edition of the Open City Documentary Festival is kicking off this Tuesday, September 4, taking place over six days in venues across Central London. As part of their “Penny Lane: Observing Observation Itself” program, the festival will be running two feature films and eight short films by 2017 Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Award Recipient Penny Lane, including:
Morgellons disease is a medical mystery. Although doctors have no explanation for the condition, thousands of sufferers claim to experience a persistent crawling sensation under their skin, thin fibres growing out of their body and a host of other symptoms. Penny Lane dives head first into the online community of Morgellons patients re-working candid home-videos uploaded to YouTube by three women who are afflicted with the disease. Friday, September 7 at 6:10 PM. *
Throughout Richard Nixon’s presidency, three of his top White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with Super 8 home movie cameras. Saturday, September 8 at 1:00 PM. *
This screening offers a rare opportunity to see Lane’s short form work; distinctive, entertaining and provocative in equal measure. The event will include an extended Q&A with Penny covering her work and creative practice. Sunday, September 9 at 1:00 PM. *
Congratulations Penny!
And a special congratulations to Chicken & Egg Pictures Board Member Alexandra Shiva on her UK Premiere of This Is Home at the Open City Documentary Film Festival, in partnership with the London Migration Film Festival. Saturday, September 8 at 6:00 PM.
*Synopses from the Open City website.
Post by 2018 Communications Intern Morgan Lee Hulquist.