katherinepertuso@bavc.org
PROVISIONS: Demystifying Film Festival Programming with Celeste Wong
PROVISIONS is a new series from BAVC Media, featuring interviews, advice, and insights into the creative process from our mediamaking community. Submitting your film to a film festival is exciting and a great way to connect your work with audiences, but it can also be incredibly overwhelming. To help demystify what you should consider throughout the process, we reached out to Celeste Wong, a freelance film festival programmer, or according to her, “a professional film fan,” who currently the US Indies programmer for Mill Valley Film Festival and has worked with the Tribeca Film Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival, as [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Development Manager: Jess Epstein
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Development Manager: Jess Epstein Tell us a little bit about yourself (career, hobbies, anything you’d like us to know). Hi! I am so excited to be joining BAVC. I’m originally from Massachusetts but have called New York home for nearly 15 years. I studied Visual Culture and Social Change and minored in Documentary in undergrad and have a MA in Arts Administration from Baruch College. I’m a freelance producer currently working on my first feature documentary, which is a dream come true! I feel like I’ve been building a career working towards this goal [...]
PROVISIONS Filmmaking Foundations: Where to Start with Keith Battle
PROVISIONS is a new series from BAVC Media, featuring interviews, advice, and insights into the creative process from our mediamaking community. Keith Battle is a born storyteller, an educator with over ten years of experience, and BAVC Media’s Director of Advanced Training and Workforce Development. He equips up-and-coming filmmakers with video production skills to get their projects off the ground and tell their stories. We recently caught up with him about what he wished he knew before making his first film, pre-shoot anxiety, over-planning, and if you actually need to level up your gear. This conversation has been edited for [...]
Q&A with BLACK BARBIE Filmmaker Lagueria Davis
Still from Black Barbie: A Documentary We recently caught up with 2019 MediaMaker Fellow and filmmaker Lagueria Davis! Lagueria directed and produced the film Black Barbie: A Documentary, which is part of a broader movement to increase understanding of the importance of representation for Black women. It premiered at SXSW and screened at HotDocs. Through intimate access to a charismatic Mattel insider, Beulah Mae Mitchell, Black Barbie delves into the cross-section of merchandise and representation as Black women struggle to elevate their own voices and stories, refusing to be invisible. Black Barbie: A Documentary is screening as part of the [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Co-Director of the MediaMaker Fellowship: Jin Yoo-Kim
Tell us a little bit about yourself! I think the first thing most people know about me is that I was born in Bolivia. My identity has been a constantly shifting journey. My first language was Korean since both of my parents are Korean. My second language was Spanish, and I only learned English when I came to the U.S. when I was six years old. My primary language now is the language of documentation. Early on in my identity journey I realized I would most likely be an outsider in any community I “belong” to and I moved around [...]
Announcing the 2023 MediaMaker Fellows
The BAVC Media MediaMaker Fellowship is one of the longest standing programs in the US for investing in diverse emerging documentary filmmakers. We're celebrating 7 New Fellows for 2023! BAVC Media is honored to introduce its new cohort of BAVC MediaMaker Fellows for 2023. Each participant will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funding, mentorship, industry access, feedback sessions, and workshops during an immersive 9-month experience. 2023 MediaMakers This year’s fellows are Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Aurora Brachman (Dear You), ilana coleman (The Inventory), Tommy Franklin (You Don’t Know My Name), Cyrus Moussavi (Somebody’s Gone), Hannah Myers (Daddy) and tashi tamate weiss [...]
Meet the 2023 MediaMaker Fellows
BAVC Media is honored to introduce a new cohort of seven new BAVC MediaMaker Fellows for 2023! The MediaMaker fellowship is one of the longest standing programs in the US for investing in diverse emerging documentary filmmakers. This year’s fellows are Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Aurora Brachman (Dear You), ilana coleman (The Inventory), Tommy Franklin (You Don’t Know My Name), Cyrus Moussavi (Somebody’s Gone), Hannah Myers (Daddy) and tashi tamate weiss (Kizuna). Learn more about the fellows and each of their projects below. Paige Bethmann Paige Bethmann is a Haudenosaunee director and producer based in Reno, Nevada. Over the last 10 years, [...]
An Interview With BAVC Media’s Director of Marketing & Communications: Daniel Díaz
Get to know BAVC Media’s Director of Marketing & Communications, Daniel Díaz! Daniel Díaz, BAVC Media's Director of Marketing & Communications started his role with us in November of last year. Daniel is responsible for the organization’s brand, marketing, communications, and design strategies. We're so excited to have Daniel on the BAVC Media team so Isa Nakazawa, our Director of Community Engagement, asked him a few questions to help our community get to know him better. Tell us a little bit about what got you into the field of Marketing and Communications and why you find the work compelling. I [...]
PROVISIONS: Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking with Rodrigo Reyes
PROVISIONS is a new series from BAVC Media, featuring interviews, advice, and insights into the creative process from our mediamaking community. Director Rodrigo Reyes makes films deeply grounded in his identity as an immigrant artist, pushing the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling. His most recent film, Sansón and Me, is a documentary a decade in the making which began when Reyes worked as a court interpreter in rural California for the then 19-year-old undocumented Mexican migrant Sansón Noé Andrade, who was sentenced to two life sentences without parole. Unable to film inside the prison, Sansón’s story is told through reenactments by [...]
