Four Nest-supported Films at Berlinale 2023
Chicken & Egg Pictures is proud to see three Nest-supported films in Berlinale 2023 lineup. El eco/The Echo and Hummingbirds will have their world premiere, and the recent Sundance winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary The Eternal Memory will have its European premiere. The festival takes place from Wednesday, February 16 to Sunday, February 26.
El eco / The Echo
dir. & prod. Tatiana Huezo
prod. Dalia Reyes
El eco / The Echo will have its world premiere in the Encounters section and was supported through Tatiana Huezo’s 2021 Chicken & Egg Award.
Get your tickets here.
The Eternal Memory
dir. & prod. Maite Alberdi
prods. Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue
The Eternal Memory will have its European Premiere in the Panorama Section and was supported through Maite Alberdi’s 2020 Chicken & Egg Award.
Get your tickets here.
Hummingbirds
dirs. Silvia Del Carmen Castaños, Estefanía “Beba” Contreras
co-dirs. & prods. Jillian Schlesinger, Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Diane Ng, Ana Rodriguez-Falco
prods. Leslie Benavides, Rivkah Beth Medow
Hummingbirds will have its world premiere in the Generation 14plus section and is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab finalist.
Get your tickets here.
From the AlumNest
- My ne zgasnemo / We Will Not Fade Away
dir. Alisa Kovalenko
prods. Valery Kalmykov, Oleksiy Kobelev
World premiere in the 14plus competition of Berlinale Generation
Alisa is also participating in the Berlinale Talents Event A Closer Look: Current Docs from Ukraine - 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson is participating in the Berlinale Talents Event Simply Absurd: Subversive Screenwriting
Kirsten Johnson is the Special Guest of Visions du Réel!
We are egg-cited to see Nest-supported filmmakers participating at Visions du Réel (International Film Festival Nyon, Switzerland): 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson, who is the Special Guest, and 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars (previously titled Stories from Debris), which is having its world premiere. The in-person festival will take place in the city of Nyon from Thursday, April 7 to Sunday, April 17, and online from Monday, April 11 through Monday, April 18.
Kirsten Johnson
Special Guest of Visions du Réel
2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson will give a masterclass in partnership with Le Temps, and her work as director as well as a selection of films to which she contributed will be featured in a retrospective. Plus, the posters and visual identity of the festival were taken from Kirsten’s body of work.
- Masterclass
Thursday, April 14 - Cameraperson (Nest-supported)
dir. & prod. Kirsten Johnson, prod. Marilyn Ness
Get your tickets with this link. - Bintou in Paris
dirs. Kirsten Johnson & Julia Pimsleur, prod. Julia Pimsleur - Deadline
dirs. Kirsten Johnson & Katy Chevigny, prods. Katy Chevigny & Dallas Brennan - The Above
dir. & prod. Kirsten Johnson, prod. Marilyn Ness - Dick Johnson is Dead (Nest-supported)
dir. Kirsten Johnson, prods. Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness - Derrida
*Cinematography by Kirsten Johnson
dirs. Kirby Dick & Amy Ziering Kofman, prod. Amy Ziering Kofman
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars
(previously titled Stories From Debris)
dir. Jennifer Rainsford
prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski
On March 11, 2011, a tsunami devastated the coasts of Japan, claiming thousands of lives. Today, the scars of this tragedy remain visible. Yet in spite of this, people, plants and animals alike continue to exist. Through striking images shot on land and in the sea, Jennifer Rainsford’s film celebrates human resilience and the endless beauty of our planet.*
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its world premiere in the International Feature Film Competition .
Get your tickets with this link.
Check out the trailer with this link.
Take a look at the full line-up with this link.
*Text courtesy of Cineuropa.
Celebrating Kirsten Johnson’s Primetime Emmy® Award!
The ceremony for the 73rd Primetime Emmy® Awards was held on Sunday, September 12.
Here at Chicken & Egg Pictures, we are egg-cited to send massive congratulations to 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson on her Outstanding Directing For A Documentary/Nonfiction Program win for Dick Johnson Is Dead, prods. Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness.
Congratulations Kirsten! 🥳
Read the full award winners list here, and check out the list of Nest-supported nominees here.
Post by 2021 Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
Chicken & Egg Award Filmmakers receive Emmy® Nominations
The nomination list for the 73rd Primetime Emmy® Awards, was announced on Tuesday, July 13 and includes projects by three Chicken & Egg Award recipients. At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we are celebrating this egg-cellent news and wishing them the best!
Dick Johnson is Dead
dir. Kirsten Johnson
prods. Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness
Nominated for Outstanding Cinematography For a Nonfiction Program, Outstanding Directing For A Documentary/Nonfiction Program, and Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking
8:46 – Dave Chappelle
dirs. and prods. Julia Reichert, Steve Bognar & Dave Chappelle*
Nominated for Outstanding Directing For A Variety Special.
American Masters
A special congratulations to 2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient Yoruba Richen for her direction of How It Feels To Be Free. The film participated in the 35th season of the American Masters series, which was nominated for Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Series. American Masters is produced by Julie Sacks.
Check out the full nomination list here. The 73rd annual Emmy® Awards will take place next September 19, 2021.
*Chicken & Egg Pictures supported Julia Reichert through the 2016 Chicken & Egg Award but did not directly support her new project, Dave Chappelle.
Post by 2021 Summer Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
A Full Nest at Sundance at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival features line-up was announced today, Wednesday December 4, and we are egg-static for the following women filmmakers, who will be premiering their films at the festival in Park City, Utah from Thursday, January 23 to Sunday, February 2, 2020.
Coded Bias
Directed by Shalini Kantayya (Project: Hatched 2020)
Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the US to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela
Directed by Anabel Rodríguez (Project: Hatched 2020)
Once, the village of Congo Mirador was prosperous. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.
The Fight
Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, Eli Despres (Project: Hatched 2020)
Inside the ACLU, a team of scrappy lawyers battle Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.
A Thousand Cuts
Directed by Ramona Diaz (2018 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)*
Nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy.
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Directed by Recipient Kirsten Johnson (2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)*
With this inventive portrait, a cameraperson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
*These films were in development during the filmmaker’s Chicken & Egg Award year.
In addition to these directly supported films, our AlumNest filmmakers (the 300+ talented, diverse women nonfiction directors that we have supported throughout our fifteen years as an organization) are also premiering their films at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival:
Aggie
Directed by Catherine Gund (Born to Fly, Dispatches from Cleveland, and What’s on Your Plate?)
The Last Thing He Wanted
Directed by Dee Rees (Eventual Salvation)
Taylor Swift: Miss Americana
Directed by Lana Wilson (2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
Untitled Kirby Dick/Amy Ziering Film
Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (The Invisible War)
The Mole Agent
Directed by Maite Alberdi (2020 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
Congratulations to these incredible women filmmakers on their Sundance-bound films. We’ll see you in Park City!
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 Films and Filmmakers in 2017 POV Lineup!
Check out Chicken & Egg Pictures-supported films and filmmakers featured in the 2017 POV lineup:
Dalya’s Other Country
Directed by Julia Meltzer
Dalya’s Other Country tells the nuanced story of members of a family displaced by the Syrian conflict who are remaking themselves after the parents separate. Effervescent teen Dalya goes to Catholic high school and her mother, Rudayna, enrolls in college as they both walk the line between their Muslim values and the new world in which they find themselves. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).
PBS Premiere: June 26, 2017
Motherland
Directed by Ramona Diaz
Motherland is an absorbingly intimate, vérité look at the busiest maternity hospital on the planet, in one of the world’s most populous countries: the Philippines. Women share their stories with other mothers, their families, doctors and social workers. In a hospital that is literally bursting with life, we witness the miracle and wonder of the human condition. Winner, 2017 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Commanding Vision.
PBS Premiere: October 16, 2017
Cameraperson
Directed by Kirsten Johnson (2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient)
A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of cinematographer Kirsten Johnson. A work that combines documentary, autobiography, and ethical inquiry, Cameraperson is a thoughtful examination of what it means to train a camera on the world. Official Selection, 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
PBS Premiere: October 23, 2017
Check your local listings for the schedule in your time zone.
Chicken & Egg Pictures announces the five recipients of the second annual Breakthrough Filmmaker Award
We are pleased and proud to announce the recipients of the second year of the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award. The five chosen filmmakers are Geeta Gandbhir (Prison Dogs), Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), Penny Lane (NUTS!), Grace Lee (American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs), and Dawn Porter (Trapped). This award consists of a $50,000 unrestricted grant and a year-long creative support and mentorship program tailored to each filmmaker’s individual goals.
The Chicken & Egg Pictures Breakthrough Filmmaker Award responds to the reality that only a few women non-fiction directors in the U.S. are able to work full-time as independent storytellers. The program recognizes and elevates five experienced women directors with unique voices who are poised to reach new heights and to continue to be strong filmmaker-advocates for urgent issues and creative visions.
“After a successful inaugural year, we welcome this new cohort of talented women into the program,” said Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures . “Through our investment in these filmmakers, Chicken & Egg Pictures affirms its commitment to supporting women from a diversity of backgrounds, with powerful voices, who are driving change through storytelling. They are creative risk-takers who have made their mark and are ready to push the boundaries even further and continue to bring to the forefront critical issues and stories.”
Recipients of the Chicken & Egg Pictures 2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award were chosen through an international, confidential nomination process.
For additional information on Chicken & Egg Pictures and the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award please visit our Program page.
2017 BREAKTHROUGH FILMMAKER AWARD RECIPIENTS
Geeta Gandbhir
Geeta began her career in editing. As an editor, she has won two Emmy® Awards. Her latest feature documentary, Prison Dogs, which she co -directed with Perri Peltz, premiered at the 2016Tribeca Film Festival. Her film with Sharmeen Obaid -Chinoy, A Journey of A Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; won the Jury award for Best Documentary at The Bentonville Film Festival; and won the Humanitarian Award at the River Run Film Festival. She co-created and was a director on a series about race for The New York Times Op-Docs entitled The Conversation, which won an Online Journalism Award. Her film with Ms. Peltz, Remembering the Artist, Robert De Niro, Sr., for HBO, premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently finishing a feature documentary on a bomb disposal unit in Pakistan.
Kirsten Johnson
Drawing on footage she shot for a myriad of documentary directors over the last 25 years, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; won the Cinema Eye Awards for Best Documentary, Best Editing, Best Cinematography; and the National Board of Review Freedom of Expression Award. Widely reviewed as one of the top films of 2016, it received awards at nine international festivals, was nominated for the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the IDA Documentary Awards, the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards , the Independent Spirit Awards, and is currently shortlisted for an Academy Award®. Johnson’s short film, The Above, was nominated for 2016 Best Short Film Award by the IDA. Her interest in image-making, collaboration with documentary filmmakers, and the ethical dilemmas faced by camerapeople around the world is ongoing.
Penny Lane
Penny Lane’s most recent feature, NUTS!, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize for Editing. Her debut feature documentary, Our Nixon, premiered at the 2013 Rotterdam International Film Festival, had its North American premiere at SXSW, won the Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was selected as the closing night film at New Directors/New Films. Lane was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2012 and “Most Badass” at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009. Film festival screenings span the independent and experimental film worlds, including Sundance, Rotterdam, Images, IMPAKT, Hot Docs, Full Frame, CPH:DOX, and Oberhausen. She is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University.
Grace Lee
Grace Lee is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose work explores questions of history, race, politics, and community. She directed American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, which won six festival audience awards and aired on the POV documentary series. Other directing credits include The Grace Lee Project, Janeane From Des Moines, the Emmy®-nominated Makers: Women and Politics, and Off the Menu: Asian America. Lee’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Center for Asian American Media, Film Independent, and the Sundance Institute, where she was a Women at Sundance Fellow. She recently co-founded the Asian American Documentary Network and is currently in production on Ktown92, an interactive documentary that explores the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots through the eyes of the greater Koreatown community.
Dawn Porter
Dawn Porter is a documentary filmmaker whose first feature, Gideon’s Army, won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award in 2013 and later broadcast on HBO. The film was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. Dawn’s other films have appeared on PBS, OWN and the Discovery Channel. In 2015, Porter interviewed President Barack Obama for Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper. Dawn’s latest feature project, Trapped, explores the impact of laws regulating abortion clinics in the South. Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. In 2016, Porter was named to Variety’s “10 Documakers to Watch” and received the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence at DOC NYC’s Visionaries Tribute. She also recently created a short film for The New Yorker Presents, a digital series executive produced by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney.
Five Chicken & Egg Pictures-supported films to screen at DOC NYC
The 2016 edition of the DOC NYC Film Festival features five films directed by Chicken & Egg Pictures grantees. Running November 10-17, 2016 in Manhattan, the DOC NYC Film Festival is America’s largest documentary film festival.
You can check out the full lineup of films, shorts, panels, and showcases here.
Cameraperson
Directed by Kirsten Johnson
Drawing on footage she’s shot over the course of 25 years, documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson searches to reconcile her part in the thorny questions of permission, power, creative ambition, and human obligation that come with filming the lives of others. Tickets and showtimes available here.
Care
Directed by Deirdre Fishel
Care exposes the deep flaws in the U.S. eldercare system by following the intimate and dramatic stories of three overworked and underpaid home health aides and one family struggling to find and pay for quality care. The film sounds the alarm about an exploited workforce, an aging population, and an impending crisis of care. Tickets and showtimes available here.
The Pearl
Directed by Jessica Dimmock & Christopher LaMarca
The Pearl witnesses the loss and extraordinary risk of four middle-aged and senior war vets, steel foremen, and fathers and grandfathers coming out for the first time as transgender women in the hyper-masculine culture of the Pacific Northwest. Each year, their lives intersect at the annual Esprit Conference for T-girls, a weeklong event enlivening a community broken by isolation and loss. Tickets and showtimes available here.
Trapped
Directed by Dawn Porter
At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by the age of 45. Four in 10 unwanted pregnancies are terminated by abortion. What would happen if access to care for these cases completely disappeared? Following the progress of two reproductive health clinics in the South, Trapped captures their struggle as they continue to provide care in an increasingly hostile legal and political climate. Tickets and showtimes here.
Visitor’s Day
Directed by Nico Opper
Sixteen-year-old Juan Carlos ran away from home to escape abusive parents. After years of battling alcohol addiction and homelessness, he found his way from Mexico City to the rural town of Atlixco, where he joined dozens of other runaway boys living in a group home named Ipoderac. This film follows Juan Carlos during the most transformative year of his life, as he prepares to travel back to Mexico City to confront his father one last time. Tickets and showtimes available here.
The Nest brings a lot to the table at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest
This year, a half-dozen Chicken & Egg Pictures supported films will be screened at Sheffield Doc Fest. These Egg-septional films span a variety of topics including life behind bars, the cost of aging, and battles both personal and universal.
The festival, which bridges the gap between audience and filmmaker, takes place this year from June 10-15, 2016, and will screen over 150 films.
Cameraperson
Directed by Kirsten Johnson
Cameraperson turns the camera inwards, exposing the most powerful moments for cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson. By plucking footage from her expansive work of over 25 years, Kirsten Johnson reminds us of the nature of life, where stories intermingle, cross-pollinate, and provide a new lens through which to view the world.
Care
Directed by Deirdre Fishel
As lifespans are increasing, the question of providing the quality care needed to our ever-aging population presses down upon us with increasing force. Deirdre Fishel gives insight into the lives of both the caregivers and those taken under their wing. The story, which focuses on home health aides in their struggle to provide for themselves as they devote their lives to helping others, is paralleled by that of the families that can no longer afford to bring in the help our older generation needs.
Solitary
Directed by Kristi Jacobson
Solitary provides a gripping look into life in prison, for both inmates and officers. It is a film about entrapment with the self, an effort to inform society of life in loneliness. Solitary provides a voice for the 80,000 people currently in solitary confinement in the US while letting them know they are not alone.
Sonita
Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami
Sonita is the story of an 18-year-old Afghan woman following her dream to be a rapper while society surrounding her tries to silence her. She stands up against forced marriages, including her own, in which she was to be sold off for $9,000 in order to allow her family to purchase a wife for their son. This film’s personal nature imbues it with universal meaning.
Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four
Deborah S. Esquenazi
The events that transpired in Salem in 1692 seemed a far cry from anything that could happen today, yet when four women are convicted of raping two little girls in 1994, we encounter a modern day Salem. Southwest of Salem brings hints that our judicial system might be more of a prejudicial one.
When Two Worlds Collide
Heidi Brandenburg & Mathew Orzel
The struggle of indigenous people to maintain their surrounding land when in conflict with the interests of the big companies reminds us that our battle to preserve our environment rather than establishing locations for the production of monetary gains is ever present.Honored with a Special Jury Prize for Best First Feature at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Two Worlds Collide captivatingly reminds us of the state of the one world we are slowly losing.
