Past Guests Round-Up 1/14/2022
Happy 2022 y’all, or Happy 2020 Season 3! Well, hopefully not! Miss Rona has unfortunately been doing her thang, but so have our past guests. So, for this first episode of the new year, we’d like to do our second past guest round-up, where we celebrate the accomplishments of some of our past peeps! Here we go!
Episode 33’s Raven Two-Feathers was a panelist at an event sponsored by Three Dollar Bill Cinema where they discussed intersectionality, identity, and hopes for changes in ethics in filmmaking. Three Dollar Bill Cinema provides access to films by, for, and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their families. It also provides a forum for LGBTQ+ filmmakers to share and discuss their work with audiences.
Episode 31’s Brenda Avila-Hanna and her colleagues at New Day Films celebrated the organization’s 50th anniversary in November.
Episode 29’s Jin Yoo-Kim, producer of Manzanar Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust celebrated Korean-American Day with excellent news this week. She directed the Boyle Heights/Los Angeles episode of the series “Take Out with Lisa Ling” on HBOMax. Manzanar Diverted was also a recipient of the Chicken & Egg Project: Hatched Grant and was nominated for Best Documentary Film at the Red Nation Film Festival. It also won the Asian Voices Award at the Portland Film Festival. The film has upcoming screenings at the Mammoth Film Festival, the Santa Fe Film Festival, the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, and the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema. Congrats Ann & Jin!
Episode 28’s Adam Benzine finally got his wish! His film The Curve was acquired by the distributor Syndicado. The president of the company, Greg Rubidge, said in an article on Deadline said, “Adam’s doc hooked me in its first five minutes, playing out more as an investigative thriller that weaves its unfolding timeline through the political dismissal and mismanagement of the pandemic. We’re thrilled to be releasing the film, which so powerfully brings to light the arrogance and ignorance that needlessly killed so many Americans.”
Episode 27’s Ashley O’Shay was selected as one of “Doc NYC’s 40 under 40” to watch.
Episode 20’s Victoria Thomas along with her colleagues, Emile Hertling Péronard, Welket Bungué, and Rico Johnson-Sinclair are creating actionable, tangible change. The four have joined the steering group for the Anti-Racism Task Force for European Film.
Episode 19’s Day Al-Mohamed, episode 18’s Chloë Walters-Wallace, and episode 1’s Tracy Rector are all new fellows for Doc NYC’s Documentary New Leaders! Congratulations, although these three have been working a combined number three decades to advance the work of BIPOC documentary creators!
And more news about episode 19’s Day Al-Mohamed, she and episode 14’s Set Hernandez Rongiklyo have joined forces and were awarded development funds from Sundance for the joint project unseen. We can’t wait to have these two come back on the show together to tell us more about the film.
Episode 16’s Elegance Bratton and Chester Argenal chatted about Pier Kids with members of the African Diaspora Film Club at the Museum of the African Diaspora.
Episode 12’s Bo McGuire and his film Socks on Fire and Episode 2’s Emily Cohen Ibañez and her film Fruits of Labor were both nominated for the Spotlight Cinema Eye Honors. Socks on Fire also screened a the New Orleans Film Festival and the Charlottesville Film Festival. He won the Best Documentary Film at the Nashville Film Festival, the Audience Choice Best “Shout” Film at the Sidewalk Film Festival, and an Honorable Mention for Southern Features at the Hot Springs Film Festival.
Episode 7’s Dante Alencastre’s film AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman continues to traverse the globe with its premiere in Greece at the Thessaloniki International GLAD Film Festival.
This week, episode 4’s Sonya Childress launched a huge initiative she developed as a fellow at the Perspective Fund with the amazing Sahar Driver, who we hope to have on the show at some point. The Color Congress is a national collective of majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling by, for, and about people of color in the US. On the website, it says, “We aim to support those organizations with the smallest budgets that have not benefited from national funding, but which offer critical support to the documentary field and to their communities (based on geographic location, racial and ethnic identities, roles and functions in the field, etc.).” And episode 18’s Chloë Walters-Wallace and Episode 1’s Tracy Rector are both on the Color Congress’ advisory committee.
And last but not least, Episode 3’s Godisamang Khunou was selected as a 2022 Electric South Immersive Media Lab fellow for her VR companion project to her film Black Women and Sex.
