Named Winner of the Redford Center Environmental Impact Film Project – The Hollywood Reporter
Amid the climate crisis that is seeing record-breaking global temperatures break, the Redford Center has announced the 12 winners of the Environmental Impact Film Project grants. school for the year 2022-2023. The Center – an environmental media nonprofit founded in 2005 by Robert Ford and his late son James Redford – provides a six-monthly recurring grant to a select group of cinematic storytellers who focus on focuses on environmental justice, related topics and solutions to improve the health of the planet.
“We see these artists as translators: humanizing the problems we desperately need to solve and giving a voice to frontline activists who are constantly being bullied by the film and film sectors. the mainstream environment looks down on and the people, quite frankly, are taking us out of the way,” said Jill Tidman, executive director of the Redford Center. The Hollywood Reporter Among the winning teams, note that the center is one of the few in the industry to exclusively sponsor independent environmental documentaries while also providing support to sponsored filmmakers.
The Redford Center started its filmmaker sponsorship program in 2016, and this year’s selections represent the fourth-place of the winners. More than 250 projects from 20 countries applied for funding – supported by the New York Community Trust and the Walton Family Foundation – through an open call.
Dozens of projects selected by the Redford Center focus on topics as diverse as Black farmers in Oregon addressing issues around food sovereignty and land ownership; whistleblowers in Siberia call attention to an abandoned coal mine that has caught fire under their neighborhood; members of the Blackfeet Tribe, who are working to bring wild bison back to their native lands; and a group of fishermen in Mexico, who created a refuge in the sea off the Yucatan Peninsula. Six of the projects from the US and three from Mexico along with Canada, Bulgaria and Turkey were also among the winning filmmakers. Each grant of $20,000 can be spent on production costs and campaign impact, while GoPro for a Cause provides in-kind equipment support and grantees can also apply. second year fund.
The Redford Center also announced a new group of funding advisors from the film, environmental and nonprofit worlds who will work with funded filmmakers on story development, creating impact campaign around documentaries and their film distribution strategy. The advisory team includes Catapult Film Fund co-founder, Lisa Kleiner Chanoff; Cheryl Hirasa, chief executive officer of Pacific Islanders in Communications; FilmAid Director Gita Saedi Kiely; documentary producer Simon Kilmurry; Subgenre founder Brian Newman; Tracy Principal, executive director, storyteller, at Nia Tero; Brenda Robinson of HiddenLight Productions; Megha Agrawal Sood, director, head of climate stories, at Doc Society; KindHumans Co-CEO Justin “Hoost” Wilkenfeld; and Project Regeneration executive (and former social impact svp at Participants) Samantha Wright.
“These 12 movies are very special. Robinson, head of film finance and inclusion strategy at HiddenLight, said: “At a time when the climate emergency is finally on most people’s minds – including that including growing recognition from Hollywood – these films highlight issues we all need to know about and support before it’s too late.”
Tidman added, “This particular group of grantees is a signal to the film industry that now It’s time to move on to climate-inclusive storytelling. These projects show how it can be done, and we are so grateful to be a part of this impactful storytelling journey. “
Among the previous winners of the Redford Center grants – which have totaled $1.3 million to date – are documentaries like Netflix’s. Youth V Gov; Peabody Award Winner Invented tomorrow; and the documentary Green New Deal To the end.
The winners of the Redford Center Influential Film Project Grant 2022-2023 are:
Black Snow
Alina Simone (director), Kirstine Barfod (producer), Harry Vaughn (co-producer)
Synopsis: Whistleblowers in a remote Siberian settlement discover an old coal mine that has caught fire beneath their neighborhood.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Bring them home
Daniel Glick, Ivy MacDonald and Ivan MacDonald (directors)
Synopsis: members of the Blackfeet Nation who are working to bring back wild bison.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Featured city
Jay Arthur Sterrenburg and Kelly Anderson (directors), Brenda Ávila-Hanna (producers)
Synopsis: A community in Brooklyn grapples with the future of New York City’s last active waterfront as it faces facilitation, growth, and employment demands.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Find a home
Maria Stanisheva (director), Manon Messiant (producer)
Synopsis: A series of animated documentaries and interactive installations highlighting climate refugees displaced from their homes and forcibly displaced by sea level rise, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and Moreover.
The earth
Faith E. Briggs (director), Tracy Nguyen-Chung (producer)
Synopsis: The story of Shantae and Art Johnson, part of a black farmer movement in Oregon that addresses issues of food sovereignty, land ownership, community healing, and reclamation.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Kay
Jimena Mancilla and Ángel Ricardo Linares Colmenares (director)
Synopsis: Fishermen in a small Mexican town create an undersea shelter to protect fish stocks off the Yucatan Peninsula.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Our Seeds (job title)
Erhan Arik (director), Meryem Yavuz (producer, cinematographer)
Synopsis: In northeastern Turkey, a farming couple – who are still holding onto a 1,500-year-old ancestral seed – face the reality that they can’t let the seed’s fate take its toll. their children’s hands.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Sacrifice Zone: 48217
Ben Corona (director)
Synopsis: In southwestern Detroit, a resident, who has documented air pollution from an oil refinery through his images, works to organize his neighbors.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
See green
Nadine Pequeneza and Su Rynard (directors)
Synopsis: Authors and scientists Robin Wall Kimmerer, Suzanne Simard, and Paco Calvo provide fresh insights into the plant world and how they are highly evolved organisms.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Last Chinamperos (position)
Megan Alldis (director), Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys (producer)
Synopsis: Just outside of Mexico City, in the canals of Xochimilco and against the onslaught of urbanization, an indigenous father and son fight to continue their ancestral legacies of the past. crockery, an Aztec farming system made of floating gardens that maximized the water holding capacity of plants.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Queendom
Otilia Portillo (director)
Synopsis: As the magical – and beneficial – qualities of mushrooms become more prevalent, a key element of their story is being erased: Indigenous women.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
Undamming The Klamath
Shane Anderson (director)
Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of the largest river removal and restoration effort the world has ever seen, the film follows an ongoing, multi-generational, Indigenous-led effort to restore restore the Klamath River and its wild salmon streams, which have been a source of nourishment, culture and spirituality since time immemorial.
Courtesy of the Redford Center
