American Documentary

Overview

New York, N.Y. —August 26, 2024 — American Documentary, UFO (Untitled Filmmaker Org), and Chicken & Egg Pictures, announced today the three projects participating in the new work-in-progress initiative, “Shorts In-Session,” which will present short documentaries in-production and post-production to a panel of industry experts at the 2024 Camden International Film Festival (CIFF). The working committee responsible for planning and managing the “Shorts In-Session” initiative are Sean Weiner, Arno Mokros and Martha Gregory (Co-Directors) for UFO; Kiyoko McCrae (Program Director) and Tobi Phang-Lyn (Industry & Artist Development Manager) for Chicken & Egg Pictures; and Opal H. Bennett (Senior Producer / Executive Producer) for American Documentary.

“We’re so excited to return to CIFF for the second year in a row on a shorts initiative with our friends at Chicken & Egg,” said Opal H. Bennett, Senior Producer and Executive Producer, for American Documentary. “This year, we were lucky to also collaborate with the shorts masters at UFO and focus on projects which are a little further along in production. This panel is an opportunity for filmmakers to get some key insights from industry and for decision makers to connect with standout projects while still in the production pipeline.”

“Given our core commitment to coalition-building across the filmmaker support ecosystem, UFO is thrilled to collaborate with such values-aligned partners as American Documentary and Chicken & Egg,” said Sean Weiner, Co-founder and Co-director of UFO. “So much of our work is about seeking out and addressing gaps in available support for independent filmmakers, and we’re uniquely invested in the under-resourced shorts space. With ‘Shorts In-Session,’ we are providing a new platform for short filmmakers to receive guidance and build meaningful relationships with industry experts.”

“We are thrilled to continue working with American Documentary/POV in supporting short-form documentaries with this new initiative and to officially partner with UFO for the first time,” said Kiyoko McCrae, Program Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “We all share a deep commitment to provide artist-centered support for filmmakers to fulfill their creative visions and to reach wide audiences. We look forward to bringing these talented filmmaking teams to Camden International Film Festival, which showcases some of the most inspiring and groundbreaking films and is beloved by filmmakers and industry alike.”

The Shorts In-Session Participating Filmmakers:

Katie Heiserman

Katie Heiserman is a public historian and filmmaker passionate about preserving and publicizing overlooked histories. In her media-making practice, she uses archival material to examine collective memory and urban histories of resistance. Katie has worked at museums and media companies including the Museum of the City of New York, the New-York Historical Society, BRIC Arts Media, and Best Case Studies. She was the recipient of New York University’s 2022 Urban Public Humanities Fellowship and currently serves as a fellow at the New York Preservation Archive Project. She graduated from NYU’s Master’s program in Archives & Public History in 2023.

Elana Meyers

Elana Meyers is a documentary editor from New York City. Her work has screened on various streaming platforms, on PBS, and in major film festivals. She edited the feature, No One Asked You, which premiered at DOC NYC. Elana has worked on projects supported by ITVS, Tribeca, and the New York Foundation of the Arts. Her work has also been exhibited at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico City), the Pérez Art Museum (Miami), the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (New York) and more. She was granted the Carole Fielding Award for her thesis film in the Northwestern Documentary MFA program. Elana is drawn to political stories that are overlooked by mainstream media. Her work spotlights personal narratives to convey how societal structures intersect with human experience.

Paloma Martinez

Paloma Martinez is an award-winning non-fiction filmmaker and educator from Houston. She first picked up a camera as a labor organizer in Texas. Her short documentaries, Enforcement Hours, Crisanto Street and The Shift, have been distributed in The New York Times Op-Docs, The Guardian and The Atlantic, respectively. Crisanto Street was also broadcast nationally on POV Shorts on PBS. Paloma holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Stanford University and a BA in Economics from Boston University.

Bree Nieves Robert

Bree Robert is a producer and creative specializing in unscripted Series, digital, and documentary. She has worked on a number of series, longform, digital and short-form projects for premium networks, streamers and stations, including CNN, Soledad O’Brien Productions, Hulu, VICE, and PBS.

She was selected for the SFFILM House Residency (2023), the Sundance Uprise Fellowship (2022), NBCUniversal Producer’s Award for the Asian American Journalist Association (2022) and the Center for Asian American Media Fellowship & Documentary Grant (2021 & 2020).

About

About UFO
Guided by a culture of care, UFO gives time, space, and money to filmmakers at under-resourced career stages. Through filmmaker support programs that emphasize in-person, inclusive community-building, UFO creates opportunities for filmmakers from wide-ranging, intersectional backgrounds to develop and produce uncompromising, boundary-pushing films. In coalition with partner organizations, UFO helps build a more equitable, sustainable, and interdependent film ecosystem.

Launched by co-directors Martha Gregory, Arno Mokros, and Sean Weiner in 2023, UFO has sought to strategically fill gaps in the filmmaker support landscape. UFO’s core programs include a Short Film Lab hosted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) that serves underrepresented early-career filmmakers and a Family Filmmaker Residency hosted at the Silver Sun Foundation in the idyllic Catskills, that provides time, space, money –and most crucially, childcare– for artist parents to focus on the development or post-production of a feature film project. UFO continually develops new partnership-driven programs in New York State and beyond.

About Chicken & Egg Pictures
Chicken & Egg Pictures shapes a more equitable and just world with the catalytic power of documentary films by providing funding, mentorship, and industry access to a global community of women and gender-expansive filmmakers. We believe greater gender representation behind the camera results in documentary films that reflect the diversity and complexity of the human experience. It is our mission to disrupt systemic barriers so filmmakers thrive in their careers and artful, society-changing films get made.

Since our founding, Chicken & Egg Pictures has awarded over $14 million in grants and devoted thousands of hours of creative mentorship to over 500 filmmakers from around the world. Films supported by C&E have been nationally and internationally recognized with the industry’s highest honors, including Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, and Peabody Awards—and they have raised visibility and driven social change on urgent issues. For additional information please visit our website at www.chickeneggpics.org.

About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, Acton Family Giving, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.