Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust
SYNOPSIS
From the majestic peaks of the snow-capped Sierras to the now parched Eastern California valley of Payahuunadü (Owens Valley), “the land of flowing water,” Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust poetically weaves together memories and insights of intergenerational women from three communities. Native Americans, Japanese American World War II incarcerees, and environmentalists form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from the insatiable thirst of Los Angeles.
Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Ann Kaneko is an Emmy Award winner, known for her personal films that weave her intimate aesthetic with the complex intricacies of political reality. Her poetic feature, Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust, premiered at the 2021 Big Sky Film Festival and won honorable mentions at CAAMFest and Milwaukee Film Festival. She has screened internationally and been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, The California Endowment, and Skirball Cultural Center. Other films include A Flicker in Eternity, based on Stanley Hayami’s diary; Against the Grain: An Artist’s Survival Guide to Peru, highlighting Peruvian political artists; Overstay, about Japanese undocumented workers, and 100% Human Hair, a musical for the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Fluent in Japanese and Spanish, Kaneko has been a Fulbright, Japan Foundation, and Film Independent Doc Lab Fellow and funded by JustFilms/Ford Foundation, The Redford Center, CAAM, Vision Maker Media, Firelight Media, and Hoso Bunka Foundation. She is a member of BGDM, A-Doc and New Day Films, a distribution coop. She teaches at Pitzer College and is the artist mentor for VC’s Armed with a Camera Fellowship.
Daughter of a Lost Bird
SYNOPSIS
Daughter of a Lost Bird follows Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, a Native woman adopted into a white family, as she reconnects with her Native identity. The film—both instigator and follower—documents Kendra on this odyssey as she finds her birth mother April, also a Native adoptee, and returns to her Lummi homelands. Relying upon verité scenes as the bulk of the film, the story is intense, emotional, personal, and represents many affected by the Indian Child Welfare Act and Indian Adoption Project. We watch both women navigate what it means to be Native and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in.
Daughter of a Lost Bird is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Brooke Pepion Swaney works to tell contemporary Native Stories. Her first feature documentary Daughter of a Lost Bird (Vision Maker Media/CPB) is beginning its festival circuit and most recently and notably, she made The Black List’s Inaugural Indigenous List in 2020 with Tinder on the Rez, along with her co-writer and friend Angela Tucker. When not working in the film industry, Brooke shares her skills with her screenwriting students as a Faculty Mentor at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Low Residency MFA program. Brooke is an enrolled citizen of the Blackfeet Nation and a Bitterroot Salish descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Brooke likes bitmojis, living in Montana, and her special needs dog Schoko.
On The Divide
SYNOPSIS
McAllen, TX is home to the last abortion clinic on the Texas/Mexico border. It is the center of the tension between religious protesters who try to stop patients coming inside and the security staff of the clinic who fight to protect it. On The Divide follows three different Latinx members of this community and the unforeseen choices they face for their daily survival.
On The Divide is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Maya Cueva is a Latina award-winning director and producer with a background in documentary, radio, and audio producing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Latino USA,” The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic. Her feature film, On The Divide, premiered in the documentary competition at 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. She was also selected to be part of the Tribeca Film Institute/A&E StoryLab in 2020. Her short documentary, The Provider, premiered at SXSW and was nominated for a student Emmy. Maya’s other film Only the Moon premiered at Full Frame Documentary Festival in 2019 and awarded her a Sundance Ignite Fellowship via the Sundance Film Institute. Maya was a 2019 North Star Fellow part of the Points North Institute, a 2019 Film Independent Documentary Lab fellow, and a fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center. Her most recent short documentary Ale Libre was selected to screen at several Oscar qualifying festivals, including Big Sky Documentary Festival, Hot Docs, Aspen Film Festival, and SFFILM. Maya’s feature documentary On The Divide will broadcast on POV PBS in Spring 2022.
Leah Galant is a Jewish filmmaker and Fulbright Scholar based in New York whose storytelling focuses on unexpected narratives often through the lens of womxn. While at Ithaca College in 2015 she was named one of Variety’s “110 Students to Watch in Film and Media” for her work on The Provider, which follows a traveling abortion doctor in Texas (SXSW 2016, Student Emmy Award) and Beyond the Wall about a formerly incarcerated individuals re-entry process. She was a Sundance Ignite and Jacob Burns Fellow where she created Death Metal Grandma (SXSW 2018) about a 97 year old Holocaust survivor named Inge Ginsberg who sings death metal which won Best Documentary at the American Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival, and is a NY Times Op Doc. Leah is a member of Meerkat Media, a worker-cooperative film production company in Sunset Park NY. Leah’s directorial debut On The Divide premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and will broadcast on POV PBS in the Spring of 2022.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Melanie Miller, Diane Becker, Amanda Spain, Elizabeth Woodward
Change The Name
SYNOPSIS
An intimate portrayal of Black youth organizing on the west side of Chicago, Change The Name follows a group of 5th graders from Village Leadership Academy as they embark on a campaign to rename Stephen A. Douglas Park after freedom fighters Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass. Over the course of the three-year grassroots campaign, the students tackle bureaucratic Chicago Park District systems, underestimations of their capacity to make real change as well as a pandemic and global uprising.
Change The Name is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Cai Thomas is a documentary filmmaker and DP telling vérité stories at the intersection of location, self-determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her most recent film, Change The Name, supported by P&G and Tribeca Studios through Queen Latifah’s Queen Collective had its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Festival. Cai’s prior film, Queenie, premiered at NewFest winning the NY Short Grand Jury award, “The jury unanimously felt that the cinematic scope and emotional depth captured in the film’s 19 minutes brought with seeming ease a colossal new figure to the forefront of the cinematic canon.” She is a member of the NeXt Doc collective and is a Sisters In Cinema fellow. Her work has been supported by the Field foundation, Jonathan Logan Family foundation, If/Then shorts, Onward, and others. Cai is an inaugural Mellon Arts Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
And So I Stayed
SYNOPSIS
And So I Stayed is an award-winning documentary about survivors of abuse fighting for their lives and spending years behind bars. These women paid a steep price with long prison sentences, lost time with loved ones, and painful memories. Formerly incarcerated survivor-advocate Kim DaDou Brown, who met her wife while incarcerated, is a driving force in the passage of New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a new law meant to prevent survivors from receiving harsh prison sentences for their acts of survival. Nikki Addimando, a mother of two young children, suffered the consequences when a judge didn’t follow the law’s guidelines. Tanisha Davis, a single mother who was ripped away from her son in 2013, is hopeful the new law is her way out of a harsh prison sentence.
And So I Stayed is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Natalie Pattillo is an award-winning, New York-based multimedia journalist. Her reporting bylines include the New York Times, MSNBC, VICE, Jezebel, New York Magazine, Al Jazeera America and Salon. In 2020, she was awarded the Media Award from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She received a Master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School in 2017. Because Natalie has experienced domestic violence in a past relationship, her mission to uplift survivors and their stories is a personal one. Natalie’s own experiences as a survivor, as well as the passing of her sister who was killed at the hands of an abusive boyfriend in 2010, helps her understand what position the survivors in the film might have been in when they were fighting for their lives.
Daniel A. Nelson is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who worked as a cinematographer and researcher on Oscar-nominated director David France’s feature-length documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which celebrates the lasting political legacy of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson and seeks to finally solve the mystery of her unexplained death, the film premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and landed on Netflix. Daniel received his Master’s from the Columbia Journalism School in documentary filmmaking in 2016. His thesis at Columbia was a short documentary called Posture about the controversial world of competitive yoga, which premiered at the 2017 Long Island International Film Expo and was published on Yoga Journal.
Dope Is Death
SYNOPSIS
In 1973, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of the late Tupac Shakur, along with members of the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, combined community healthcare with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in the United States. Over the course of the 1970s, the Lincoln Detox Peoples’ Program became a fixture of hope in the South Bronx helping thousands of people kick heroin and/or methadone. Dope Is Death explores why this program was considered a threat to the political and social stability of the Nation, while cementing the legacy of its founders.
Dope Is Death is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Mia Donovan is an award-winning filmmaker based in Montreal. Her films have screened at True/False, IDFA, Hot Docs, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, DOC NYC, and CPH DOX; among other international film festivals. They have also streamed on digital platforms including Netflix and VICE. She’s made three documentary feature-films with Eyesteelfilm: Inside Lara Roxx (2011), Deprogrammed (2015), and Dope Is Death (2020). Mia has also explored other platforms to tell nonfiction stories including virtual reality and podcasting. She made Deprogrammed VR in 2016, which won the coveted IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling that same year. And most recently, made her first limited podcast series Dope Is Death the Podcast (2020). Mia was a 2012 Don Haig Award recipient and she holds an MFA from Concordia University.
Since I Been Down
SYNOPSIS
Since I Been Down is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Gilda Sheppard is an award-winning filmmaker who has screened her documentaries throughout the United States and internationally—in Ghana, West Africa, France at the Fest Afrique 360 Cannes, and Germany at the International Black International Cinema Festival in Berlin. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 Artist Trust Fellowship recipient. Sheppard recently completed her documentary Since I Been Down on education, organizing, and healing—developed and led by incarcerated women and men in Washington State’s prisons. Since I Been Down has been accepted at over 13 film festivals in the US and Canada, won the Social Justice Film Festival’s Feature Documentary Gold Prize, and was recognized among the “Best of the Fest” at DOC NYC.
For over a decade, Sheppard has taught sociology classes in Washington State prisons. She is a sponsor for the Black Prisoners’ Caucus and is a co-founder and faculty for Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS), an organization offering college accredited courses at Washington Corrections Center for Women. Sheppard is also a Professor of Sociology and Cultural and Media Studies at the Tacoma Program at Evergreen State College.
Unapologetic
SYNOPSIS
Unapologetic captures a tense and polarizing moment in Chicago’s fight for the livelihood of its Black residents. The film follows Janaé and Bella, two young abolitionist organizers, as they work within the Movement for Black Lives to seek justice for Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald, two young Black people killed by Chicago police. They aim to elevate a progressive platform for criminal justice to a police board led by Lori Lightfoot and a complicit city administration, while also elevating leadership by women and femmes.
Unapologetic is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Ashley O’Shay is a director-DP based in Chicago, Illinois, whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. She has collaborated with a number of brands, including Nike, Vox, Wilson Tennis, and Dr. Martens. Most recently, she filmed an international commercial spot for Wilson Tennis, with over one million views in digital markets. In 2020, she captured the final episode of Dr. Martens “Tough As You” series, starring the band Phony Ppl, accruing over 65K views on social and web.
Her work also appeared in the critically-acclaimed Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly. Although she has crafted many short films, Unapologetic is her first venture into the feature world. The film premiered at the 2020 BlackStar Film Festival and was shortlisted for the IDA Documentary Awards.
Fruits of Labor
SYNOPSIS
Ashley is a high school senior who must divide her time between school and supporting her family as a second-generation Mexican American. Located in a California working class town, the harshness of agricultural labor in the strawberry fields shares a stark contrast with the beautiful nature and relationship to her spiritual ancestral upbringing. Director Emily Cohen Ibañez documents Ashley’s life guided by the spirit world through her hardships and joys in modern America.
Fruits of Labor is a participant of Project: Hatched 2021.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Emily Cohen Ibañez (Director/Cinematographer/Producer/Writer) is a Latinx filmmaker with Colombian and Syrian Jewish heritage. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology in 2011 with a certificate in Culture and Media at New York University.
Her film work pairs lyricism with social activism, advocating for labor, environmental, and health justice. Her feature documentary debut, Fruits of Labor premiered at SXSW 2021 with its international premiere at Hot Docs 2021. Emily was a Fulbright Scholar from 2007 to 2008 based in Colombia; she screened her film Bodies at War in 22 rural Colombian municipalities affected by landmines in partnership with the Colombian Campaign Against Landmines. Emily regularly makes commissioned short films for venues like The Guardian, The Intercept, and Independent Lens. She is a recipient of multiple fellowships and grants including the National Science Foundation, JustFilms/Ford Foundation, Firelight Media Documentary Lab, 4th World Indigenous Media Lab, Field of Vision, and the Sundance Institute | Kendeda Short Film Fund, amongst others.
Landfall
SYNOPSIS
Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72-billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. Landfall examines the kinship of these two storms—one environmental, the other economic—juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, Landfall reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?
Landfall is a participant of Project: Hatched 2020.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Cecilia Aldarondo is a documentary director-producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who makes films at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her work has been supported by ITVS, HBO, A&E, the Sundance Institute, Cinereach, Firelight Media, Field of Vision, IFP, the Jerome Foundation, and many others. Her debut documentary Memories of a Penitent Heart had its World Premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on POV in 2017. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2017 Women at Sundance Fellow, two-time MacDowell Colony Fellow, and recipient of a 2019 Bogliasco Foundation Residency. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list and is one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for 2015. She teaches at Williams College.