Austin-based Emmy-nominated Mexican-American filmmaker Chelsea Hernandez was named one of this year’s three recipients of the International Documentary Association (IDA) Logan Elevate Grant, which provides a cash grant of $30,000 to emerging women and non-binary filmmakers of color directing feature-length journalistic documentary films. The grant also provides story consulting for grantees and funds educational programming throughout the year.
Named as DOC NYC’s 2021 40 Under 40 Class, Hernandez has worked for ten years in the documentary television and film industry on such projects like PBS national broadcast special, Fixing the Future. She is an eight-time Emmy winning director, producer and editor in the Texas region for her work on PBS documentary series, "Arts In Context."
Chelsea's short documentary work includes See the Dirt, (2012 Austin Film Festival Best Short Documentary) and An Uncertain Future (2018 SXSW Texas Short Jury Winner, Aspen Shorts Youth Jury Winner, Dallas International Film Festival Best Texas Short Special Mention). She made her feature directorial debut in 2019 with the award-winning documentary Building the American Dream which premiered at SXSW 2019 and broadcast nationally on PBS in September 2020. She is a JustFilms, Tribeca All Access, and Warner150 grant recipient, a fellow of Firelight Media Doc Lab, Tribeca Edit Storylab, Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) National Mediamaker Program and NALIP Latino Media Market.
Hernandez is currently working on the Untitled 19th* News Film which follows a fearless group of journalists, including founder Emily Ramshaw and editor-at-large Errin Haines that in 2020 seek to upend the white male status quo in U.S. news by launching an all-women and non-binary news start-up. Building a newsroom that reflects the women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ communities they’re writing about, can The 19th* be a model for the news industry in these changing times?
