ASCO: Without Permission by Travis Gutiérrez Senger
The Ford Foundation, one of the nation’s largest private funding organizations that prioritizes social justice and equity-oriented projects and programs, has announced its overall funding for independent documentary film in 2021. JustFilms, part of the Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression (CFE) program, provided over $20.29 million to support 122 organizations and filmmakers in the United States and Global South, including a substantial disbursement to supporting U.S. Latinx and Latin American filmmakers in new or ongoing documentary projects.
From the overall allocation, JustFilms granted over $5 million to support 71 content projects, with 49 comprising new grantees and 73% of the support going to filmmakers identifying as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. The additional $15.29 million went to fund documentary organizations such as Black Star Projects, Third Horizon, and Sundance Institute that are working to support emerging creatives and diversify the documentary film industry at large.
Newly granted projects by U.S. Latinx and Latin American directors include Travis Gutiérrez Senger’s ASCO: Without Permission, executive produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna – a feature length documentary that profiles the extraordinary art collective of the 70's-80's, ASCO, who merged activism/art and challenged Latinx representation in the art world, politics, and Hollywood through their incendiary performance art, photography, video, and muralism; David Siev’s Bad Axe which explores race and resilience through the story of his Cambodian-Mexican-American family’s fight to save their restaurant in their rural town; and Alex Rivera’s latest documentary project Banishment, which intends to frame abolition and the re-imagining of law enforcement through the United States' long history of deportation.
Additional funded projects include Argentine director Ulises de la Orden’s El Juicio on Argentina’s 1985 Trial of the Juntas; Hummingbirds by Silvia Castaños, Estefanía "Beba" Contreras, Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Diane Ng, Ana Rodriguez-Falco and Jillian Schlesinger, a collaborative coming-of-age film set in a Texas border town; Racismo MX by José Antonio Aguilar Contreras, which explores how racism manifests in the lives of three people in Mexico;
Karuara, People of the River by Peruvian director Miguel Araoz Cartagena and Stephanie Boyd; Most Likely to Succeed by Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker; The Untitled 19th News Film by Chelsea Hernandez, Heather Courtney, and Princess Hairston; Untitled Domestic Workers Documentary by Colombian director Paola Mendoza; and Whose City by Javier Lovera.
Four documentaries by U.S. Latinx and Latin American directors have also received continuing grant support, including Borderlands, the latest film from Pamela Yates; Going To Mars:The Nikki Giovanni Project from collaborators Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster; The In-Between by Robie Flores; and What We Leave Behind by Iliana Sosa.
For more information on the supported U.S Latinx and Latin American filmmakers and projects, check out the entire list here.
