Firelight Media, the New York-based non-fiction production company, recently unveiled this year’s recipients of it’s annual William Greaves Fund program with a particularly strong emphasis on Latin American and Caribbean creators. Out of twelve awarded filmmakers, over half are from Central or South American or the Caribbean with three hailing from Brazil, two from Mexico, one from Colombia and one from Puerto Rico.
An international research and development fund created in 2020, the William Greaves Fund works to support mid-career documentary filmmakers from racially and ethnically under-represented communities. It provides $40,000 grants to each recipient for research and development on a feature-length non-fiction film.
The fund is “designed to address persistent structural challenges many filmmakers encounter after their first film, to keep these filmmakers in the field.” Firelight Media, which creates films by and about communities of color, launched the fund in “response to the observation that mid-career filmmakers of color were often not receiving enough support or funding to proceed to their second or third films.”
The awarded filmmakers and projects encompass a wide array of genres and styles, running the gamut from historical biographies, personal and experimental narratives, to investigative documentaries. Out of the Latin American grantees, the subjects include Brazilian activist and union organizer Laudelina de Campos Melo, and undocumented Latin American minors migrating, unacompanied, through Central America to the U.S.
“These are visionary filmmakers with unique perspectives and tremendous skill and capability. Their work deserves support and trust, which we are happy to provide in hopes that the rest of the industry catches up,” said Stanley Nelson, co-founder of Firelight Media, in a press release announcing this year’s winners.
Notably, the fund also includes a basic care stipend that grantees are free to put towards essential needs that normally fall outside the purview of traditional funding allocations, such as healthcare and childcare costs or other resources that Firelight sees as fundamental to these makers producing groundbreaking and creative work.
The fund was named in honor of William Greaves, a pioneer in Black non-fiction filmmaking who produced the television newsmagazine Black Journal and more than 200 documentary films during a 60-year career.
This year’s Latin American and Caribbean grant recipients, along with the titles of their projects, are:
Ángela Carabalí, No los dejaron volver (Will They Ever Come Back?) (Colombia)
Traveling a long road, Ángela and her sister Juliana enter the indigenous land where their father was forcibly disappeared years ago. The route confronts them with the metamorphosis of violence in Colombia and the reconstruction of their family portrait.Juan Carlos Dávila Santiago, Yolas en Rebeldía (Rebel Boats) (Puerto Rico)
A documentary film about the life of Vieques fisherman and revolutionary, Carlos “Taso” Zenón. For decades Taso fought against the military occupation of his native land fighting the US Navy both on land and sea — it was the fisherman’s slingshot against the military cannons.Tania Hernández Velasco, Mi cuerpo es una estrella que se expande (My Body is an Expanding Star) (Mexico)
Two siblings make an imaginary pilgrimage through the memory and geography of their Brown bodies in order to discover their beauty and dignity. As they journey through the seas of their stretch marks, the fields of their hair, and the constellations of their moles, their ancestors emerge to accompany them.Sueli Maxakali, Yõg ãtak: meu pai, Kaiowá (Yõg Ãtak — My father, Kaiowá) (Brazil)
Yõg Ãtak: meu pai, Kaiowá is a road movie that mixes personal and historical narratives as it follows the filmmaker and her sister on their search for their father. The journey connects the northeast of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the filmmaker’s Maxakali people live, to the south of Mato Grosso do Sul, where her father’s people, the Guarani-Kaiowá, live.Graciela Pereira de Souza, Horizonte Colorido (Colorful Horizon) (Brazil)
Horizonte Colorido is a lyrical film that uses art to build universes and also enhances and amplifies original female voices.Rodrigo Reyes, Children of Exodus (U.S.)
Children of Exodus is an urgent story capturing one of the most critical human rights crises of our times. The film confronts audiences with an intimate, deeply-human portrait of the struggles of unaccompanied minors, told in a bold narrative style grounded in magic-realism and the voices of the children.Lilian Solá Santiago, Quase da Família (She is Almost Family) (Brazil)
She Is Almost Family is a documentary on the lives and cultural expectations of Brazilian housekeepers, who are mostly Black women. Woven together with stories of the life of Laudelina de Campos Melo, founder of the first housekeepers’ union in Brazil, the film includes historical reenactments performed by activists from the very union that Ms. Melo founded.María Sojob, Riox, Palabra florida (Riox, Flowery Word) (Mexico)
Upon returning to her village after many years away, María meets a village elder who is the only woman to speak the Riox, the ceremonial language of their people. Soon, María embarks on a quest to learn the language, but her training will only be complete if she is granted permission by a sacred cave.
