Two Afro-Latinx filmmakers, Débora Souza Silva and Sisa Bueno, were announced yesterday among the seven projects awarded with this year’s Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund presented by the International Documentary Association (IDA). Each project will receive grants up to $20,000 through the fund honoring the legacy of legendary American documentary filmmaker Pare Lorentz.
“We are pleased to help IDA and The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund bring to light important social issues through the masterful storytelling of their selected filmmakers.” said Salem Tsegaye, Program Officer, Arts & Culture at The New York Community Trust.
“The filmmakers supported through the latest round of Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund are tackling some of the most urgent issues faced by a society where our criminal justice system all too often fails to live up to the goal of equal justice for all,” said Simon Kilmurry, executive director of IDA.
Souza Silva is a documentary filmmaker whose work examines systemic racism and inequality. Her work has been featured on PBS, BBC Brazil, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and Fusion. Silva started her career as a TV reporter in Brazil before moving to California to pursue a Master in Journalism at UC Berkeley. She is a former fellow with the Firelight Media Documentary Lab and the Chicken & (Egg)celerator Lab, and a member of the Studio IX Advisory Council. Silva is also a recipient of the NYT Institute fellowship, the Investigative Reporting Program fellowship, the Tribeca All Access grant, The Center for Investigative Reporting & Glassbreaker Films residency, and a NABJ's Les Payne Founder's Award.
She is currently working on her debut feature film Black Mothers, which follows the journey of two women working to disrupt the cycle of racist police violence within the country's judicial system. As one mother navigates the aftermath of her son’s attack by local police, the other channels her grief into organizing other mothers to fight for concrete change and justice.
Originally from New York City, Bueno is a traveling film & multimedia maker who is dedicated to making inaccessible stories more accessible to audiences. She studied both film production and interactive technologies at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). The NBC Network named Sisa a 2013 Latino Innovator for her upcoming documentary To the Mountains (in post-production), which highlights Black & Indigenous decolonization movements in Bolivia, South America. She has also completed a short film for AJ+ related to the same subject. Sisa is a recipient of the ITVS-PBS Diversity Development grant, Hot Docs CrossCurrents grant, BAVC MediaMaker fellowship, and the Points North Institute North Star fellowship.
She’s currently working on For Venida, For Kalief, a poetic cinematic portrait of the complex microcosm of criminal justice reform in New York. The film debuts the poetry of Venida Brodnax Browder, mother of Kalief Browder, whose unjust arrest and tragic suicide deeply resonates with the majority of New Yorkers, and also launches a lyrical exploration of the complicated struggle to end mass incarceration.
