Durham, N.C. – Dec 7, 2021 – Southern Documentary Fund (SDF) has selected ten projects to receive Production Grants in the amount of $10,000 each. Recipients include a diverse group of filmmakers across seven Southern states, with half of the awards going to aspiring and emerging makers, totaling $100,000 in unrestricted support to projects in varying stages of production.
Southern Documentary Fund Executive Director Kristy Garcia Breneman said, “This year’s applicant pool was rich with Southern talent, telling a vast range of powerful stories from across our region – we were thrilled to be able to expand the recipients from five to ten grantees. It is an honor to support these voices that are critical to a more accurate telling of America’s story – both historic and current.”
Notable awardees include acclaimed filmmaker Julie Dash, whose 1991 feature DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST became the first feature-length film directed by an African American woman to obtain general theatrical release in the United States. Emmy-nominated media producer and filmmaker Ashley York’s new project, DEAR APPALACHIA, is a documentary series that highlights a commonly misunderstood place within the United States. Emmy award winner Daresha Kyi’s new project BLACK VOTERS MATTER, is a feature-length documentary about the co-founders of the Black Voters Matter Fund, Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, and the crucial role they played in flipping Georgia from red to blue in both the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 Georgia Senate run-offs.
The 2021 SDF Production Grant cycle is made possible thanks to generous support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which granted SDF $250,000 in general operating funds this year to support the organization’s programs and mission to deliver critical resources to Southern documentary makers.
SDF PRODUCTION GRANTEES – (10) $10,000 GRANTS
(DEY/DEM): A CHOREO-DOC | NOVA CYPRESS BLACK – Georgia
Explores how the lived experiences of Black nonbinary folks in Atlanta, GA, echoes the nearly erased history of gender nonconformity in pre-colonial Africa. We been here. We are here. Our pronouns are Black.
BLACK VOTERS MATTER | Daresha Kyi – Georgia
Feature length documentary about the co-founders of the Black Voters Matter Fund, Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, the work they do to empower African American communities especially in the rural South, and the crucial role they played in flipping Georgia from red to blue in the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 Georgia Senate run-offs.
DEAR APPALACHIA | John Fee & Crystal Good & Ashley York – Kentucky/West Virginia
Documentary series that highlights a commonly misunderstood place within the United States. Each episode has its own narrative arc and interweaves multiple narrative threads using cinéma vérité storytelling combined with personal interviews and archival material. Each episode will be directed and produced by filmmakers from the region in an effort to empower Appalachians to tell their own stories.
INHERITANCE | Maria Warith-Wade – Virginia
As the nation looks to Richmond, VA, to reckon with its Confederate legacy, this filmmaker sets out to uncover the housing system’s revisionist history: which has left her hometown divided and allowed segregation to thrive.
MAY THE LORD WATCH: THE LITTLE BROTHER STORY | Holland Randolph Gallagher – North Carolina
The story of Little Brother, North Carolina’s preeminent rap group. Composed of rapper Big Pooh, Phonte, and producer 9th Wonder, MTLW details the rise, disbandment, and ultimate reunion of a Southern rap group that stayed in the South, rooted to their grounded artistic style against pressures to transform into a stereotype of imagined blackness. The Little Brother story is a story of the enduring nature of music, place, and friendship.
SALTWATA VIBES | Sherard Duvall – South Carolina
Feature length documentary film about Gullah Geechee Afrofuturism. A brother and sister go on a journey to explore how Gullah Geechee young people on the coast of South Carolina are redefining their culture and to see if, together, they can create a modern contemporary music that could represent the sound of the Gullah Geechee of tomorrow.
THE BODY IS NOT A THING | Monica Villavicencio & Stephanie Liu – Georgia
In the thick of menopause, three women question everything they’ve been told about aging to find new narratives in unlikely places
THE IN BETWEEN | Robie Flores – Louisiana/Texas
A lyrical coming-of-age portrait of growing up on the U.S.-Mexico border that celebrates and explores how the fronterizo identity takes shape. Following a chronology from early childhood to adolescence, the contours of formative moments emerge – mundane and momentous. As the experiences of the children unfold, the director’s own thoughts and memories weave between and around them, with the narration acting like the hand that turns the kaleidoscope to constantly reveal new shapes and facets of the fronterizo identity – and her own evolving relationship to it.
THIS BELONGS TO US | Atinuke Diver – North Carolina
Chronicles the stories of Black women brewers in the American south and explores their journeys of reclamation and revival as they navigate the predominantly white, male-dominated industry of craft beer in the United States.
TRAVEL NOTES OF A GEECHEE GIRL | Julie Dash & Rachel Watanabe-Batton – Georgia/South Carolina
In search of her authentic self, a South Carolinian Geechee girl wakes up in Paris realizing she’s just another starving writer living at the Beat Hotel; after a failed marriage and work as a Moon Goddess with the Sun Ra Arkestra, her bestselling cookbook changes how the world talks about women, race, and food.
2021 Final Jury
Rahi Hasan: Documentary + Multimedia Artist
Roni Nicole Henderson: Filmmaker, Writer, Photographer, Artist
Kate Rogers: Film Programmer
2021 First-Round Reviewers: Alyssa Armand, Laura Asherman, Babacar Ndiaye, Marta Núñez Pouzols, and Trey Roberts.
