Past Chicken & Egg grantees have come through this unique pitching opportunity, which is very in-tune with the C&E methodology of working with filmmakers. Well worth checking out!
The PALEYDOCFEST2010 Pitch Workshop in association with SnagFilms-
deadline for entries August 17th 2010
The Paley Center for Media is open for entries for its celebrated Art of the Documentary Pitch Workshop at PALEYDOCFEST2010, which will be held at the Paley Center in New York on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at 2pm. In this workshop/competition-now in
its seventh year-a panel of documentary executives and producers discuss the process of developing a documentary and will hear and evaluate pitches from five preselected up-and-coming filmmakers who are hoping to sell either a nonfiction concept or a documentary work-in-progress. The winner of the pitch competition in October will receive a $5,000 grant, sponsored by SnagFilms, to be used towards the completion of their project.
Confirmed panelists at the workshop include: Andrew Mer, VP Content
Partnerships, SnagFilms; Susan Werbe, Exeuctive Producer, HISTORY;
Lauren Lazin, Filmmaker and Executive Producer, MTV Networks; Diana
Holtzberg, Vice President - USA Operations Acquisitions, Project
Development, Sales, Films Transit International; Simon Kilmurry,
Executive Director, POV; and Molly Thompson, Programming Director, A&E IndieFilms.
Complete submission guidelines and entry forms can be found at
http://paleycenter.org/pitch2010.
Past finalists include: Garbage Dreams directed by Mai Iskander;
Prodigal Sons by Kimberly Reed; Whatever it Takes by Christopher Wong;
Hi Tech Low Life by Stephen Maing; and Circo by Aaron Schock, our 2008
winner, which premiered at Silverdocs in June.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Chicken & Egg Pictures at DOCUWEEKS,
Docuweeks, a key time in the documentary calendar for those seeking Academy recognition (films require a theatrical run in order to qualify for the Academy Awards, Docuweeks provides this opportunity), is currently ON in NY and LA.
Chicken & Egg are delighted to have no less than four projects currently playing. Be SURE to check them out; not only is this an exciting time for those hunting the golden glory that is Mr. Oscar but this is quite usually the only theatrical opportunity for documentaries and so our clever filmmakers have built in key outreach campaigns around the screenings to further their mission. The Chicken & Egg grantees are:
BUDRUS
Director/Producer/Writer: Julia Bacha
Ayed Morrar took leave of his comfortable job at the Palestinian Authority upon hearing that the Israeli government was planning to build a separation barrier through Budrus, his small agricultural village. He convened a town-hall meeting, invited Israeli civilians, and formed a movement whose motto, "We Can Do It," resonates with community organizers worldwide. To everyone's surprise, Ayed became the leader of the first unarmed movement to successfully protect and even expand Palestinian territory—an accomplishment made possible in large part by Ayed's 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, who launched a women's contingent that quickly moved to the front lines.
MY PERESTROIKA
Director: Robin Hessman
My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times—from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Using a wealth of footage rarely seen outside of Russia—including home movies from the USSR in the 1970s—the film combines an intimate view of the past with the contemporary lives of these former schoolmates, painting a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.
PUSHING THE ELEPHANT
Directors: Beth Davenport, Elizabeth Mandel
Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet she emerged from the suffering advocating peace and reconciliation. But after helping numerous victims to recover and rebuild their lives, there is one person Rose must still teach to forgive: her daughter Nangabire, now 17 and living in Arizona. Pushing the Elephant captures one of the most important stories of our age, in which genocidal violence is challenged by the moral fortitude and grace of one woman's mission for peace.
SUN COME UP
Director/Producer: Jennifer Redfearn
Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world's first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders - a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.
More on Docuweeks: Over three weeks, DocuWeeks™ presents weeklong theatrical engagements of the year’s best documentary films in Los Angeles and New York, helping the films to qualify for Academy Award® consideration in the documentary feature and documentary short categories.
DocuWeeks™ premiered in 1997, and over the past 12 years, the showcase has qualified over 133 short and feature-length films, yielding 16 nominations and seven Oscar® winners. Previous participants include Academy Award® winners Smile Pinki (2008), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006), as well as Oscar® Nominees The Betrayal, War/Dance, Salim Baba and Sari’s Mother.
Chicken & Egg are delighted to have no less than four projects currently playing. Be SURE to check them out; not only is this an exciting time for those hunting the golden glory that is Mr. Oscar but this is quite usually the only theatrical opportunity for documentaries and so our clever filmmakers have built in key outreach campaigns around the screenings to further their mission. The Chicken & Egg grantees are:
BUDRUS
Director/Producer/Writer: Julia Bacha
Ayed Morrar took leave of his comfortable job at the Palestinian Authority upon hearing that the Israeli government was planning to build a separation barrier through Budrus, his small agricultural village. He convened a town-hall meeting, invited Israeli civilians, and formed a movement whose motto, "We Can Do It," resonates with community organizers worldwide. To everyone's surprise, Ayed became the leader of the first unarmed movement to successfully protect and even expand Palestinian territory—an accomplishment made possible in large part by Ayed's 15-year-old daughter Iltezam, who launched a women's contingent that quickly moved to the front lines.
MY PERESTROIKA
Director: Robin Hessman
My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times—from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Using a wealth of footage rarely seen outside of Russia—including home movies from the USSR in the 1970s—the film combines an intimate view of the past with the contemporary lives of these former schoolmates, painting a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.
PUSHING THE ELEPHANT
Directors: Beth Davenport, Elizabeth Mandel
Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the ethnic violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet she emerged from the suffering advocating peace and reconciliation. But after helping numerous victims to recover and rebuild their lives, there is one person Rose must still teach to forgive: her daughter Nangabire, now 17 and living in Arizona. Pushing the Elephant captures one of the most important stories of our age, in which genocidal violence is challenged by the moral fortitude and grace of one woman's mission for peace.
SUN COME UP
Director/Producer: Jennifer Redfearn
Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world's first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders - a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.
More on Docuweeks: Over three weeks, DocuWeeks™ presents weeklong theatrical engagements of the year’s best documentary films in Los Angeles and New York, helping the films to qualify for Academy Award® consideration in the documentary feature and documentary short categories.
DocuWeeks™ premiered in 1997, and over the past 12 years, the showcase has qualified over 133 short and feature-length films, yielding 16 nominations and seven Oscar® winners. Previous participants include Academy Award® winners Smile Pinki (2008), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) and The Blood of Yingzhou District (2006), as well as Oscar® Nominees The Betrayal, War/Dance, Salim Baba and Sari’s Mother.
Chicken & Egg Pictures at Silverdocs
Silverdocs may be well and truly laid to rest for 2010 but we couldn't go without publicly acknowledging the success of four of our grantees at this internationally renowned festival, celebrated for its independent thinking and ability to generate global media attention for non-fiction storytelling.
We are PROUD to report that the four Chicken & Egg-supported films in competition were CELEBRATED by Silverdocs’ audiences and jurors alike.
The Sterling Award for Best US Feature went to WO AI NI MOMMY (I LOVE YOU, MOMMY) directed by first time filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal, Special Jury mention [in the same category] went to MY PERESTROIKA directed and photographed by Robin Hessman, the WITNESS Award was given to BUDRUS directed by Julia Bacha and produced by Just Vision, and MONICA & DAVID, hot from winning the Best Documentary Feature Award at Tribeca Film Festival, was SO WELL RECEIVED on a Saturday night in a large 800 seat theatre that it was held over for another “popular demand” screening.
We wish you all could have been there to watch these films jump off the screen and see the filmmakers (three of them first-time feature directors) engage their audiences with poise, power and invitations to help make their “stories lead to action.”
What a week!
Picture, from top to bottom: Ali Codina (Monica & David), Judith Helfand (C&E), Robin Hessman (My Perestroika) and Stephanie Wang-Breal (Wo Ai Ni Mommy).
An informal website conversation with Chicken & Egg Pictures and The Fledgling Fund
Originally posted by
On Wednesday June 16th, The Fledgling Fund began a new event series in collaboration with Chicken and Egg Pictures. The idea is simple - the media-makers we support are experts on so many things - let's get them all together to see what kind of sharing can happen. Every project we fund has had successes and failures that they have learned from along their journeys from making the media to inspiring social change. We wanted to take time to celebrate those lessons and create a collaborative space to share them. Here is a great video of that discussion which you can refer to: http://vimeo.com/12953847
So, for a few hours on Wednesday evening, 11 media-makers, myself and Natalie Difford from Chicken and Egg Pictures shared dumplings, sake and wisdom - all delicious. The topic for the evening was "Social Issue Film Website Do's and Dont's" - "Web Geekery" for short, dubbed by Nancy Schwartzman. Below is some of that delicious wisdom that we also wanted to share with you.
The event was such a success, that we have committed to doing a similar event every other month - each on a different topic. So, stay tuned for more of these updates, and if you are a grantee, let us know if you would like to participate in future get-togethers and topics that interest you the most.
Here were the participants for Web Geekery:
Jesse Epstein - Filmmaker, Body Typed http://jessedocs.blogspot.com/
Trish Dalton - Filmmaker, Body Typed
Nancy Schwartzman - Filmmaker, The Line http://whereisyourline.org/
Robbie Gemmel - Filmmaker, Cape Wind http://www.capewindmovie.com/
Stephanie Bleyer - Audience Engagement Campaign Manager, No Impact Project http://noimpactproject.org/ and Gasland http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Vaishali Sinha - Filmmaker, Made in India http://www.madeinindiamovie.com/
Roland Legiardi-Laura - Filmmaker, To Be Heard http://www.tobeheard.org/
Amelia Green-Dove - Filmmaker, The Recruiter http://www.propellerfilms.com/recruiter/
Alexandra Lescaze - Filmmaker, All Of Me http://allofmethemovie.wordpress.com/
Daria Sommers - Filmmaker, Lioness http://lionessthefilm.com/
Marty Syjuco - Filmmaker, Give Up Tomorrow http://www.giveuptomorrow.com/
Before the discussion, I gave the participants the following homework to bring with them to share:
1) At least one burning question you have about website design, functionality or creation process that you want to discuss with the group
2) One example of something you did right with your own film's website or with a film website that you really like
3) One example of something you would change about either your own film's website or a film website that you have visited
4) At least one thing you love about a NON-film website that you think filmmakers should incorporate into their website strategies
Here were some of the key questions that came out of the discussion:
Q. How can I find a designer that I really like?
Q. Should we be using HTML or FLASH?
Q. What are the advantages of using a blog vs. a website. Do we even need websites?
Q. We want to have an international reach and want to be compatible with bandwidths in other countries - what do we need to be aware of to make that work?
Q. How can we translate our website for other countries?
Q. What are the best ways to drive people to your website that perhaps haven't seen the film yet?
Q. How do you create a financially sustainable website?
Here are some of the highlights from the discussion:
• Wordpress is fantastic and works really well for people who have slow internet speeds or for smartphones
• No Impact Project site is not a movie site - in that it is not there to promote the movie No Impact Man but to start the conversation for people to be a part of the movement, and that structure worked well to engage people who had seen the movie and even those who had not
• Use Facebook for the interactive parts of your campaign - it's where people are at anyway and it's best to not add a new website to their day or else they won't come as often
• NING is a tool that media-makers need to know about - it's not for everyone, but can be very useful in some cases
• VOKLE is a great tool to do live Q&A's with an audience. People can interact with you on this website like a radio show so you can have web chats. Its an embeddable player. Your picture goes up next to the host and you are interacting via twitter and chat feed.
• CALL TO ACTION is a great tool for social issue media makers as well - allows you to create a widget with a piece of media that directly engages people in action after they have seen it. You can embed the widget anywhere so that it reaches people beyond your own website.
• TUMBLR is a very easy to use site that acts like a visual Twitter. One of the great things about it is that it leads visitors back to your own website.
• Media makers need to decide how much time they want to commit to their website. Do you want it to be a place where people get news about the subject of your film? If so, it is much more time consuming to do it well. It may be a better idea to let other websites who already do that continue to be the source for updated news - and you can just send your visitors to them.
• It's useful to have a full-time Twitter intern for some media-makers. If Twitter is a major part of your strategy, make the commitment. Help those interns to feel invested in the project and the issue and they will begin to really take ownership over the social media world and do an excellent job. They can even begin to create a name for themselves within the issue space.
• Make your website as "cool" as possible so that broader audiences find you online, stay with you and come back often. Don't just make a boring film website. That is useless these days.
• Linking to other films within the same subject area should be more natural - more films need to recognize the eco-system they exist within and find new ways to collaborate with other media-makers who have similar social missions.
• To just vote on something online or be told to do something is not enough, audiences have to be engaged.
Next up: Forming Partnerships in mid-August, stay tuned for more great feedback!
On Wednesday June 16th, The Fledgling Fund began a new event series in collaboration with Chicken and Egg Pictures. The idea is simple - the media-makers we support are experts on so many things - let's get them all together to see what kind of sharing can happen. Every project we fund has had successes and failures that they have learned from along their journeys from making the media to inspiring social change. We wanted to take time to celebrate those lessons and create a collaborative space to share them. Here is a great video of that discussion which you can refer to: http://vimeo.com/12953847
So, for a few hours on Wednesday evening, 11 media-makers, myself and Natalie Difford from Chicken and Egg Pictures shared dumplings, sake and wisdom - all delicious. The topic for the evening was "Social Issue Film Website Do's and Dont's" - "Web Geekery" for short, dubbed by Nancy Schwartzman. Below is some of that delicious wisdom that we also wanted to share with you.
The event was such a success, that we have committed to doing a similar event every other month - each on a different topic. So, stay tuned for more of these updates, and if you are a grantee, let us know if you would like to participate in future get-togethers and topics that interest you the most.
Here were the participants for Web Geekery:
Jesse Epstein - Filmmaker, Body Typed http://jessedocs.blogspot.com/
Trish Dalton - Filmmaker, Body Typed
Nancy Schwartzman - Filmmaker, The Line http://whereisyourline.org/
Robbie Gemmel - Filmmaker, Cape Wind http://www.capewindmovie.com/
Stephanie Bleyer - Audience Engagement Campaign Manager, No Impact Project http://noimpactproject.org/ and Gasland http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/
Vaishali Sinha - Filmmaker, Made in India http://www.madeinindiamovie.com/
Roland Legiardi-Laura - Filmmaker, To Be Heard http://www.tobeheard.org/
Amelia Green-Dove - Filmmaker, The Recruiter http://www.propellerfilms.com/recruiter/
Alexandra Lescaze - Filmmaker, All Of Me http://allofmethemovie.wordpress.com/
Daria Sommers - Filmmaker, Lioness http://lionessthefilm.com/
Marty Syjuco - Filmmaker, Give Up Tomorrow http://www.giveuptomorrow.com/
Before the discussion, I gave the participants the following homework to bring with them to share:
1) At least one burning question you have about website design, functionality or creation process that you want to discuss with the group
2) One example of something you did right with your own film's website or with a film website that you really like
3) One example of something you would change about either your own film's website or a film website that you have visited
4) At least one thing you love about a NON-film website that you think filmmakers should incorporate into their website strategies
Here were some of the key questions that came out of the discussion:
Q. How can I find a designer that I really like?
Q. Should we be using HTML or FLASH?
Q. What are the advantages of using a blog vs. a website. Do we even need websites?
Q. We want to have an international reach and want to be compatible with bandwidths in other countries - what do we need to be aware of to make that work?
Q. How can we translate our website for other countries?
Q. What are the best ways to drive people to your website that perhaps haven't seen the film yet?
Q. How do you create a financially sustainable website?
Here are some of the highlights from the discussion:
• Wordpress is fantastic and works really well for people who have slow internet speeds or for smartphones
• No Impact Project site is not a movie site - in that it is not there to promote the movie No Impact Man but to start the conversation for people to be a part of the movement, and that structure worked well to engage people who had seen the movie and even those who had not
• Use Facebook for the interactive parts of your campaign - it's where people are at anyway and it's best to not add a new website to their day or else they won't come as often
• NING is a tool that media-makers need to know about - it's not for everyone, but can be very useful in some cases
• VOKLE is a great tool to do live Q&A's with an audience. People can interact with you on this website like a radio show so you can have web chats. Its an embeddable player. Your picture goes up next to the host and you are interacting via twitter and chat feed.
• CALL TO ACTION is a great tool for social issue media makers as well - allows you to create a widget with a piece of media that directly engages people in action after they have seen it. You can embed the widget anywhere so that it reaches people beyond your own website.
• TUMBLR is a very easy to use site that acts like a visual Twitter. One of the great things about it is that it leads visitors back to your own website.
• Media makers need to decide how much time they want to commit to their website. Do you want it to be a place where people get news about the subject of your film? If so, it is much more time consuming to do it well. It may be a better idea to let other websites who already do that continue to be the source for updated news - and you can just send your visitors to them.
• It's useful to have a full-time Twitter intern for some media-makers. If Twitter is a major part of your strategy, make the commitment. Help those interns to feel invested in the project and the issue and they will begin to really take ownership over the social media world and do an excellent job. They can even begin to create a name for themselves within the issue space.
• Make your website as "cool" as possible so that broader audiences find you online, stay with you and come back often. Don't just make a boring film website. That is useless these days.
• Linking to other films within the same subject area should be more natural - more films need to recognize the eco-system they exist within and find new ways to collaborate with other media-makers who have similar social missions.
• To just vote on something online or be told to do something is not enough, audiences have to be engaged.
Next up: Forming Partnerships in mid-August, stay tuned for more great feedback!
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