New York-based Firelight Media, the non-profit filmmaking company founded by filmmaker Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith dedicated to support non-fiction cinema by and about communities of color, has announced the nine winners of the inaugural edition of the William Greaves Fund, including four Latin American filmmakers: Everlane Moraes and Vanuzia Bonfim Vieira from Brazil, Gisela Rosario Ramos from Puerto Rico, and Medhin Tewolde Serrano from Mexico.
The newly dedicated fund, named in honor of the African-American trailblazing documentary filmmaker William Greaves, resources talented storytellers from racially and ethnically underrepresented communities in the United States, as well as filmmakers from Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Colombia with a particular interest in those who identify as being of indigenous and/or of African descent.
With up to $25,000 to fund development, sizzle reels and other presentation materials, was created to help mid-career filmmakers get a lift toward producing their second film project. The program plans to expand to more international territories next year.
Everlane Moraes is a documentary filmmaker, graduated from the International Film and TV School (EICTV—Cuba), specializing in documentary direction. She holds a degree in visual arts from the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS—Brazil), and is currently developing feature film projects: The Ship and the Sea (co-production Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal—2019), The Station (co-production Brazil and France), and the Pattaki series (co-production Brazil and Cuba—2020).
Vanuzia Bonfim Vieira graduated in Intercultural Training for Indigenous Educators from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2013). She is currently a professor at the Porto Seguro City Hall. She has experience in the area of History and she’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in Teaching and Ethnic-Racial Relations. Vanuzia is currently working on a film about the strength of the Pataxó women.
Gisela Rosario Ramos studied Black and Puerto Rican Studies, Film and Media Studies, and, Fine Arts at Hunter College, NYC. Her first editing credit was as co-editor for Tami Gold’s Another Brother. She’s worked in numerous television productions in Puerto Rico as editor and director. In recent years, she has been writing fiction and her screenplay for the short film Sábado de Gloria won the first prize of the screenplay competition of CineFiesta 2011. In 2014, she directed the short documentary El hijo de Ruby. In addition to her film work, she has an alter ego named Macha Colón, who performs rock/pop music with her band Los Okapi in alternative venues in Puerto Rico.
After her training in documentary cinema, filmmaker Medhin Tewolde Serrano dedicated herself to accompanying participatory video and community communication processes in Spain, Tunisia, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala. This revealed her own identity-building process as an Afro-descendant woman, and this motivated her to create her debut feature, Negra.
Additionally Firelight Media announced two U.S. Latinx projects as part of the six recipients of the Impact Campaign Fund, designed to help filmmakers with campaigns and tools to magnify the reach of documentaries that are socially relevant, address or engage underrepresented issues or communities and are accountable to the impacted communities their films represent. The two projects are Landfall by Puerto Rican filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo, and The First Rainbow Coalition by Ray Santisteban.
Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Aldarondo’s film examines a ruined world at the brink of transformation, spinning a cautionary tale for our times. Santisteban’s documentary tell the story of Chicago’s original Rainbow Coalition funded in 1969 and working to unite African Americans, Southern Whites and Latinos to collectively confront police brutality and substandard housing in one of the most segregated cities in America. What began as a drive to achieve a voice for poor communities, quickly became a formidable political movement whose legacy can be seen in grassroots movements today.
