Summer 2020 Awards
Five Documentaries Awarded Summer 2020 Grants
We are pleased to announce the Miller / Packan Documentary Film Fund Summer 2020 award winners. The Fund awards grants totaling $200,000 annually through its Summer and Winter open calls.
Planet Z — The film follows a group of climate change youth activists as they mobilize their efforts to empower and inspire other youths and adults to create change within their communities, government and beyond. Director: Tom Donahue.
Untitled Prison Hunger Strike Film — In 2013, three men, trapped for decades in solitary confinement in, all arrived at the same decision – a hunger strike, the largest in US history. 30,000 people abolished indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons. Director: Lucas Guilkey.
In the Cold Dark Night — In 1983 in a small Georgia town, white men brutally murdered Timothy Coggins, a young black man, because of his relationship with a white woman. Authorities stopped investigating and witnesses received threats to remain quiet, the case went cold for nearly 34 years… until a new investigation opened in 2017. Director: Stephen Robert Morse.
STAYERS — The documentary follows the tight-knit crabbing community of Tangier Island, Virginia, through a dramatic year as the islanders are fighting for a sea wall to save their home. This all happens in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated presidential elections in US history. Director: Julia Dahr & Julie Lunde Lillesæter. www.differmedia.com/project/stayers
Untitled West Virginia Project — A meditation on the suffering and devastation resulting from the coal industry and its decline in West Virginia, as communities bear witness to a perfect storm of afflictions: a crumbling economy, an opioid epidemic, and environmental damage. Director: Lucas Sabean & Peter Hutchinson. www.bigtentproductions.nyc/west-virginia
“This year we’re all seeing the profound challenges we face as a society first-hand,” said Asher Rogovy, Foundation Vice-President. “Supporting these films is but one step towards progress. We can only face problems if we recognize problems, and documentary films are a powerful medium to illustrate them.”
Applications are now being accepted for the Winter 2020 Open Call, which ends November 15th.