Eight Women, Gender Expansive Documentary Filmmakers Awarded More Than $650,000 in New Grants
Chicken & Egg Pictures, an organization dedicated to offering support and funding for women and non-binary documentary filmmakers, has announced more than $650,000 in new grants to eight recipients of its 2023 Chicken & Egg Award.
The Chicken & Egg Award was created to recognize the reality that only a few women and non-binary nonfiction filmmakers in the US and abroad are able to work full-time as independent storytellers. This program, which has grown from a cohort of six to eight, awards women and non-binary documentary filmmakers who are at advanced-career stages with a $75,000 grant as well as a tailored year-long mentorship program that is targeted to the goals of each individual grant recipient.
“The reality is that, even in 2023, it’s still incredibly difficult for women and non-binary people to make careers as independent storytellers. The numbers tell the tale: two-thirds of documentaries are helmed by men,” said CEO of Chicken & Egg Pictures, Jenni Wolfson. “This chasm in representation means that men have an outsized role in telling the stories of who we are, and what’s important. Chicken & Egg Pictures is thrilled to play a role in righting this wrong, and to recognize the talent and contributions of these incredible filmmakers,” Wolfson continued.
The 2023 Chicken & Egg Award recipients are Angela Tucker, Ilinca Calugareanu, Jeanie Finlay, Lisa Jackson, Nico Opper, Rea Tajiri, Sabaah Folayan, and Sonia Kennebeck. This cohort of filmmakers have had their films showcased at festivals across the globe and include Emmy, Webby, BIFA, and Canadian Screen Award winners. Filmmakers that are part of this cohort will receive $75,000 (a $25,000 increase in funding from previous years)–a $50,000 unrestricted career grant and a $25,000 project grant.
In addition to the $75,000 Chicken & Egg Awards, for the second time, two finalists–Farida Pacha and Salomé Jashi–will receive a $15,000 Chicken & Egg Award Finalist Development Grant for their projects to recognize their great achievements in documentary filmmaking. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Farida Pacha has won 35 international awards including the main prizes at film festivals in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Madrid and Mumbai as well as the prestigious German Camera Prize for her debut documentary My Name is Salt.
Salomé Jashi is an award-winning filmmaker whose film Taming the Garden premiered at Sundance Film Festival and Berlinale and was nominated for the European Film Awards. Her film The Dazzling Light of Sunset was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition and other festivals. Her earlier work Bakhmaro was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Salomé is a co-founder of Documentary Association Georgia.
In recognition of a challenging landscape faced by women and non-binary filmmakers, Chicken & Egg Pictures has expanded the definition of advanced-career directors to encompass a broader set of backgrounds and experiences, and in this way, account for the impact of institutional barriers and structures on the development of one's career. This year's grantees are filmmakers with established careers in the documentary industry including both commissioned and independent work. By expanding support in this way, the organization hopes to widen the field for women and non-binary artists who may not have had access to the resources needed to tell their stories.
“This year, we are excited that we are able to provide more women and non-binary filmmakers with even more support, resources, and mentorship as they continue to tell important stories on wide-ranging issues. With an increase in our grant funding, these artists will have the opportunity to utilize the bulk of their awards on whatever best suits their needs as they move their careers and projects forward,” said Wolfson.
Additional information about the Chicken & Egg Award recipients:
Angela Tucker (US)
Angela Tucker (she/her) is an Emmy® and Webby Award-winning filmmaker working in scripted and unscripted film and television, highlighting underrepresented communities in unconventional ways. Her recent work includes NYT Critic's Pick Belly of the Beast (dir. Erika Cohn) and A New Orleans Noel, a Lifetime holiday film starring Patti LaBelle. Her documentaries in production are The Inquisitor, about political icon Barbara Jordan, and Steam (working title), about ancient and alternative health treatments spanning the globe.
Ilinca Calugareanu (Romania/UK)
Ilinca Calugareanu (she/her) is a UK-based Romanian filmmaker. Her directing titles include feature documentaries Chuck Norris vs Communism (Sundance, 2015), A Cops and Robbers Story (Doc NYC, 2020); and short documentaries VHS vs. Communism (Op-Docs- The New York Times), Erica: Man Made (Guardian Documentaries) and The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo (Netflix, 2022). She is a Berlinale Talents Alumna, Chicken & Egg Pictures (Egg)celerator Lab Grantee, Sundance Institute’s National Geographic Fellow, and an SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grantee.
Jeanie Finlay (UK)
Jeanie Finlay (she/her) is one of Britain’s most distinctive documentary makers whose award-winning work for cinema and television–made with steel and heart–tells intimate stories for international audiences. Her credits include films for HBO and IFC, and four commissions for BBC Storyville, with works including the (extra)ordinary pregnancy of a British trans man, and British Independent Film Awards (BIFA)-nominated, Seahorse; Emmy®-nominated documentary about the world’s biggest show, Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch; the story of the last record shop in Teesside–SOUND IT OUT; the BIFA-nominated The Great Hip Hop Hoax; Panto!; and the BIFA-winning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King. Jeanie is currently underway on her tenth feature documentary.
Lisa Jackson (Canada)
Lisa Jackson (she/her) is an Anishinaabe filmmaker whose work has garnered two Canadian Screen Awards, a Webby Award nomination, and has screened at top festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlinale, and Hot Docs. Known for cross-genre work that expands narrative boundaries and covers topics as diverse as catfishing, Indigenous languages, and lichen, she's committed to Indigenous screen sovereignty. In 2021, Lisa was recognized by the Documentary Organization of Canada with their prestigious Vanguard Award.
Rea Tajiri (US)
Rea Tajiri (she/her) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and educator who creates installations, documentaries, and experimental films. Her work situates itself in poetic, non-traditional storytelling forms to encourage dialog and reflection around buried histories.
Tajiri’s work has received support from JustFilms/Ford Foundation, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and the Leeway Transformation Award. Additionally, she received a Rockefeller Media Fellowship and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. Her latest documentary Wisdom Gone Wild, screened in the International Competition at IDFA, and in the American Lives section at DOC NYC. It won the Audience Award for Best Feature Documentary and Jury Award Honorable Mention for Best Feature Documentary at the 2022 Blackstar Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize from the San Diego Asian Film Festival as the Centerpiece Film, the Audience Award and Best Documentary Award at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. Tajiri is an Associate Professor in the Film Media Arts Department at Temple University where she teaches Documentary Film production.
Sabaah Folayan (US)
Through screenwriting, filmmaking, and public speaking, Sabaah Folayan (she/they) levels an optimistic yet unflinching gaze on the urgent questions of our time.
Sabaah made her directorial debut at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, with the feature-length documentary Whose Streets? Nominated for a Peabody Award, Critics Choice Award, Gotham Award, and NAACP Award, the film chronicles the experiences of activists living in Ferguson, Missouri when Michael Brown Jr. was killed. Whose Streets? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, broadcast for television by POV, and is now streaming on Netflix.
In 2021, Sabaah wrote the series finale of HBO’s Betty, a critically acclaimed comedy series about a crew of young female skateboarders in New York City. Her second documentary feature LOOK AT ME: XXXTENTACION premiered at SXSW 2022 and is now streaming on Hulu.
Sonia Kennebeck (Malaysia/Germany/US)
Sonia Kennebeck (she/her) is an award-winning director, producer, and investigative journalist. Her directing credits include critically-acclaimed feature films United States vs. Reality Winner (SXSW 2021), Enemies of the State (TIFF 2020), and National Bird (Berlinale 2016). Kennebeck received the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award, a Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, and an Emmy® nomination. She was recognized as one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers and Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Additional information about Chicken & Egg Award Finalist Grant Recipients:
Farida Pacha (India)
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Farida Pacha (she/her) studied Anthropology and Sociology in Mumbai before obtaining her MFA in filmmaking at Southern Illinois University. Her debut feature documentary, My Name is Salt (2013), has won 35 international awards including the main prizes at film festivals in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Madrid, and Mumbai, as well as the prestigious German Camera Prize. Her latest documentary Watch Over Me (2021) received the Grand Jury Documentary Award at the Movies that Matter Festival at The Hague and was nominated for The Robert and Frances Flaherty Award at the Yamagata International Film Festival. In 2018, she received the IDFA Bertha Fund Europe and the Jan Vrijman Fund in 2008 and 2010.
Salomé Jashi (Georgia)
Salomé Jashi studied documentary filmmaking at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her film Taming the Garden (2021) premiered at Sundance Film Festival and Berlinale Forum and was nominated for the European Film Awards. Her film The Dazzling Light of Sunset (2016) was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition and other festivals. Her earlier work Bakhmaro (2011) was nominated for the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Her producing work How the Room Felt (2021) premiered at IDFA's main competition. Salomé was a fellow of Nipkow Scholarship in 2017 and DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020. She is a member of European Film Academy and a co-founder of DOCA Documentary Association Georgia
For more information on these filmmakers and their work, visit this link.
Media Contacts:
Matisse Bustos
Christy Setzer, New Heights Communications
