Mediamaker

BAVC Media’s Youth team was honored to receive recognition from SFFILM during their Essential SF award ceremony on April 16, 2024. Essential SF is an ongoing project that shines a light on the region’s legendary, idiosyncratic, and multifaceted contributions to film culture in the Bay Area and a compendium of people and organizations most vital to the Bay Area film community.  “We are admirers of [BAVC Media’s] work of uplifting and equipping young Bay Area students and filmmakers with skills and resources to create media that promotes social change and celebrates their diverse stories through Reel Stories and BAVC Youth [...]

Last month, several BAVC Media staff members attended IDA's Getting Real, a biennial conference designed for and by documentary practitioners and focused on the business and art of nonfiction storytelling. At the conference, Brittney Réaume, BAVC Media’s Associate Director of Artist Development; Dawn D Valadez, Director of Youth & Artistic Development; and Jin Yoo-Kim, Co-Director of the MediaMaker Fellowship 2024 hosted this year's MediaMaker cohort for their first convening of the year! They gave us some of the highlights and takeaways from their trip. BAVC MediaMaker Fellows Attend IDA Getting Real Conference The 2024 cohort brought so much thoughtfulness into [...]

BAVC Media is excited to announce the latest cohort to take part in its longstanding documentary film fellowship program. Participants in the 2024 BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funding, mentorship, industry access, feedback sessions, and workshops during an immersive 9-month experience.  This year’s fellows are: Jamal Ademola (Ellas Vinieron de Las Nubes / They Came From the Clouds), Chelsi Bullard (Unfiltered), Caron Creighton (Wood Street), Julia Hunter, Patrick G. Lee (Untitled KQT Project), Ivan MacDonald (When They Were Here), Khai Thu Nguyen (The Full Thao), Pallavi Somusetty (Coach Emily). Learn more about the fellows and each of [...]

Last month we sent our 2023 BAVC MediaMaker Fellows out with a bang, we can hardly believe it's over! On Wednesday, February 28, after 10 months together, 7 exceptional filmmakers previewed their works in progress to a live audience in San Francisco at the KQED Headquarters and virtual viewers across the country. The culminating event for the 2023 BAVC MediaMaker Fellows began with words from BAVC Media Executive Director Paula Smith Arrigoni, 2020 Fellow Colette Ghunim, and Fellowship Co-Director’s, Dawn Valadez and Jin Yoo-Kim. Each fellow then pitched their project and shared a new clip, demonstrating the progress they've made [...]

In November 2023, BAVC Media hit the road to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Conference. At the conference, we hosted a poster presentation on our national survey project, Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape We also moderated the roundtable discussion: Revisiting the Magnetic Media Crisis A Decade After the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Plan. Over 60 people attended the round table discussion from organizations large and small. Find out what participants said about their challenges, ideas, and solutions to magnetic media preservation, at our recap here: MMML-AMIA Roundtable Summary If you have a magnetic [...]

In a candid conversation, filmmakers, friends, and MediaMaker alum, Robie Flores and Contessa Gayles, offer unique insights into each other's projects ahead of their premieres at SXSW. We asked them both to reflect on their collaborative friendship, which began in 2013 at the NYU Journalism Documentary Film Program they both attended for graduate school, and the deeply personal narratives they’re bringing to the festival. Robie's film, The In Between, follows the return to her hometown Eagle Pass on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence – quinceañeras, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers [...]

Last month, several BAVC Media staff members as well as our cohort of MediaMakers traveled to New Orleans Film Festival! Brittney Réaume, BAVC Media's Associate Director of Artist Development, gives us a recap as well as some highlights of their trip. Want to travel, gain insights into the industry, and strengthen your film with a community of fellow filmmakers? Applications are now open for the 2024 MediaMaker fellowship! Apply today, the deadline is December 13 (11:59pm PT) →     This is the second year that the BAVC MediaMaker Fellows have attended the New Orleans Film Festival and it did [...]

We’re excited to see several films directed by previous BAVC MediaMakers for the 46th Mill Valley Film Festival (October 5 - 15, 2023): DEMON MINERAL (Hadley Austin), SKIN OF GLASS (Denise Zmekhol), and FOUNDER GIRLS (Contessa Gayles). We reached out to each of the filmmakers to find out how their experiences as MediaMakers impacted their filmmaking journey in addition to what to expect and where to watch their films.  _______________________________________________ FOUNDER GIRLS dir. by Contessa Gayles Sat, Oct 7 ● 1PM ● Cinemark CinéArts Sequoia → Get tickets In this kaleidoscopic ode to girlhood, young campers find freedom, sisterhood, and themselves [...]