Daresha Kyi: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 3
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.
Daresha Kyi writes, produces, and directs documentary and narrative film and all kinds of television in Spanish and English. A natural born storyteller, she made her first short, experimental film, Schism, at the age of 16. Currently, she is in post production on the Nest-supported feature documentary Mama Bears about how conservative, Christian mothers are transformed when they decide to accept their LGBTQ children. In 2018, she was commissioned by the ACLU to direct Trans In America: Texas Strong which garnered over 3 million views online, screened at SXSW, won two Webby Awards, and received the Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary in 2019.
In 2017, she co-directed Chavela, a multiple award-winning documentary about iconic singer Chavela Vargas and produced Dispatches From Cleveland. A 2019 Chicken & Egg (Egg)celerator Lab grantee, 2019 Creative Capital Awardee, and 2017-18 Firelight Documentary Lab Fellow, Daresha Kyi has also produced programming for FX, We TV, AMC, Telemundo, and Fuse, among others. She holds a degree in Film and Television from New York University and attended the directing program at the American Film Institute conservatory.
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.
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.
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.
Tiffany Hsiung: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 1
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.
Tiffany Hsiung is an international award-winning filmmaker based in Toronto who creates socially conscious work and dynamic artistry, sparking a unique energy in the stories of marginalized individuals and communities. Hsiung’s approach to storytelling is driven by the relationship that is built with the people she meets both in front and behind the lens. By shooting much of her own work, Hsiung obtains unobtrusive access to the stories she captures.
Her Nest-supported project The Apology is a film about memory, told through the relationships of three women—all former comfort women who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II—as they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.
The Apology premiered at Hot Docs in 2016, and then aired on POV on PBS in October 2018. Over the course of the last year, it has received awards like the duPont-Columbia Award and Peabody Award, among others.
Tiffany is a graduate of Ryerson University Film Program and was awarded The Norman Jewison award. Her short film Binding Borders won the Best Toronto Focus Film Award as well as the People’s Choice Award at the 16th annual Cabbage Town Film Festival, and the Grand Jury prize for R.C.I/Canadian Broadcasting Channel, Digital Diversity.
Her work is fundamentally based on cross-cultural and intergenerational themes set to inspire younger generations and viewers to learn about their own cultures – and social responsibility in the global community.
You can keep up with Tiffany’s work on her website here, and follow The Apology on its film blog.
Jacqueline Olive: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 12
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Jacqueline Olive is an independent filmmaker and immersive media producer with more than a decade of experience in journalism and film. She co-directed and produced the award-winning short documentary, Black To Our Roots, which broadcast on PBS World. Jacqueline has been a Sundance Documentary Edit & Story Lab Fellow, a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellow, and Sundance Music & Sound Design Lab fellow.
She also received the Emerging Filmmakers of Color Award from International Documentary Association and the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. Jacqueline has been a immersive media fellow with the Bay Area Video Coalition Institute for New Media Technologies and Mediamaker Fellows, the Black Public Media New Media Institute, and most recently, the Open Immersion VR Lab sponsored by the Ford Foundation, National Film Board of Canada, and the Canadian Film Centre. Jacqueline has an MA from the University of Florida Documentary Institute and previously worked on the production team of the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary series, Independent Lens.
Her debut feature documentary and 2018 Accelerator Lab grantee, Always In Season, will premiere in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Always In Season explores the lingering impact of more than a century of lynching African Americans and connects this form of historic racial terrorism to racial violence today. The film centers on the case of Lennon Lacy, an African American teen who was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina, on August 29, 2014. Despite inconsistencies in the case, local officials quickly ruled Lennon’s death a suicide, but his mother, Claudia, believes Lennon was lynched. Claudia moves from paralyzing grief to leading the fight for justice for her son.
Jacqueline is currently producing a VR companion to Always In Season that uses 360° video and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to explore themes of dehumanization and violence, offering strategies for moving confidently through the racialized public spaces that black women navigate daily.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Denali Tiller: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 11
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Denali Tiller is an artist and filmmaker named one of 110 “Filmmakers To Watch” by Variety Magazine in 2015 for her short film Sons and Daughters of the Incarcerated — which grew into her feature documentary, Tre Maison Dasan.
She has worked with the US Agency for International Development, and is currently adjunct faculty at Rhode Island School of Design. Through her work, Denali is interested in empowering artists in systemic thinking, social justice, and activism. She is most passionate about children and youth advocacy, and how we raise boys in America.
Tre Maison Dasan is a story that explores parental incarceration through the eyes of three boys—Tre, Maison, and Dasan. Following their interweaving trajectories through boyhood marked by the criminal justice system, and told directly through the child’s perspective, the film unveils the challenges of growing up and what it means to become a man in America.
“We so often we tell stories about children from a top down perspective, informed by what we (adults) “know” about their experiences and psychology, and consequently how their lives will unfold. As Tre, Maison and Dasan taught me about their worlds, I recognized that there was a desperate need for a film that allows children to speak for themselves – particularly children of color – to capture the power in their own emotional intelligence, and elevate their voices in a way that fully represents their lives as they experience them.”—Denali Tiller, Director’s Statement
Tre Maison Dasan participated in the 2016 Accelerator Lab.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Sonia Kennebeck: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 10
“Films, especially documentaries, are recording and preserving current events for future generations. It is important that our female and diverse voices, stories and perspectives are part of this collection of visual history, and that includes films about major political issues, war and national security.” – Sonia Kennebeck, Indiewire
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Sonia Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist with more than 15 years of directing and producing experience. She has directed eight television documentaries and more than 50 investigative reports. Foreign Policy recognized Kennebeck as one of “100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2016,” and Filmmaker Magazine selected her as one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
National Bird, her first feature documentary, follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret US drone war. National Bird premiered at Berlinale, was selected for Tribeca Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and IDFA, and was nominated for the News and Documentary Emmy® Award for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary.
Her second feature, Enemies of the State, is a participant of the 2018 Accelerator Lab.
Enemies of the State is the story of an average American family who become entangled in a bizarre web of espionage and corporate secrets when their hacker son is targeted by the US government.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Nailah Jefferson: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 9
“The way that I would best describe my style as just, I try and be honest. I just want them to be truthful, authentic, stories. I want to give you a human connection because I think that’s what will shine through and connect people to the film each and every time.” – Nailah Jefferson, Essence
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Nailah Jefferson is a filmmaker influenced greatly by her southern roots. Her first documentary, Vanishing Pearls, told the story of a little known African American oyster fishing community and their fight for justice after the BP oil spill. And her first narrative, Plaquemines, in which a father and son navigate life in a dying fishing culture in Louisiana, was chosen as an American Black Film Festival HBO Shorts finalist and is available on HBO.
Her second feature documentary Commuted is a participant of the 2018 Diversity Fellows Initiative.
Commuted tells the story of Danielle Metz, a 52-year-old woman trying to find her footing after spending nearly half of her life in prison. In 2016 Danielle’s was one of 568 life sentences President Obama overturned. Her life story is just one example of how the US criminal justice system impacts black families—before she was incarcerated, she had lost one boyfriend to police violence, another to a wrongful conviction, and then found herself in prison due to involvement with her husband’s drug ring. As Danielle starts to right her path, we reflect with her on a life interrupted.
Loira Limbal: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 8
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Loira Limbal is an Afro-Latina filmmaker, activist, and DJ interested in the creation of art that affirms women of color and builds solidarity across communities. Her first film, Estilo Hip Hop, aired on PBS in 2009.
Limbal is currently directing Through the Night, 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.
For the past decade, Limbal has dedicated herself to fusing arts and activism. She has worked at various community-based organizations in New York City including The Point Community Development Corporation, The Dominican Women’s Development Center, and Sista II Sista. In 2006, she founded The Reel X Project, a social justice and creative filmmaking space for young women of color in the Southwest Bronx.
Limbal received a B.A. in History from Brown University and is a graduate of the Third World Newsreel’s Film and Video Production Training Program. She has received awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Lisa Sullivan Fund.
Limbal is the Vice President and Documentary Lab Director at Firelight Media. She lives in the Bronx with her two children.
Through the Night is a participant of the 2018 Accelerator Lab.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Penny Lane: Dozen Days of Filmmakers – Day 7
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Penny Lane is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker who was named one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”. Penny has been making innovative nonfiction films for over a decade, including three features – The Pain of Others, NUTS! and Our Nixon – and about a dozen short films. Her most recent feature documentary, The Pain of Others, a YouTube compilation film about Morgellons, screened at BAMcinemaFest and Sheffield Doc/Fest and was featured in The New Yorker.
In September, she was honored at Open City Documentary Film Festival in London as part of their “Penny Lane: Observing Observation Itself” program, which included screenings of two of Penny’s feature films and eight of her shorts.
She received her MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her BA in American Culture and Media Studies at Vassar College. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Colgate University, where she lives in a very old house and shows movies in her barn.
Her new feature documentary, Hail Satan?, is “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”. It was acquired by Magnolia Pictures and will have its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Penny Lane is a Chicken & Egg Pictures 2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Assia Boundaoui: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 5
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season by featuring a dozen of our supported women nonfiction filmmakers.
Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, AlJazeera, VICE, CNN and was the recipient of a first place Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Her directorial debut, The Feeling of Being Watched, was a participant in the 2016 Accelerator Lab and a recipient of The Whickers Chicken & Egg Pictures Award.
In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where 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.
In 2018, The Feeling of Being Watched had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, was an official selection at Hot Docs, and received the Audience Award at Camden International Film Festival, the BlackStar Film Festival, Boston GlobeDocs Film Festival, and the Regent Park Film Festival. The film also won jury awards for Best Documentary Feature and James Lyons Editing Award For Documentary Feature at the Woodstock Film Festival. Assia is a fellow with the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is iterating her most recent work, The Inverse Surveillance Project, a machine learning fueled sequel to The Feeling of Being Watched.
Post by Morgan Lee Hulquist.