William Greaves Research and Development Fund

This fund is Firelight’s first international initiative and was launched to provide opportunities for filmmakers to connect, learn and build solidarity across borders.

This fund reflects Firelight’s commitment to ensuring that underrepresented communities are actively cultivated, engaged, and influenced in the nonfiction space and broader discourse. The selection criteria reflect the commitment to creative rigor, imagination, ethics, and responsibility to affected communities in filmmaking practice.

Funding Information

• This fund is dedicated to providing resources and supporting talented filmmakers with grants of up to $40,000 each to support the research and development of a non-fiction feature film and any essential needs that beneficiaries have, from personal care and daycare expenses to any other necessary resources.

Eligibility Criteria

• The director must identify as a member of an ethnically and racially underrepresented community in the United States or must reside and work in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia and/or Brazil as a director.
• The director must be mid-career
• The director will have to have a feature-length documentary in pre-production.
• The director must have the intellectual property rights to the film.

Ineligibility

• Filmmakers are not eligible to receive support through one or any of Firelight Media’s artist programs if:
  • The filmmaker submits a project that is a student film or related to an ongoing course.
  • The filmmaker is reapplying to a program from which they previously received support. The filmmaker is under contract with another Firelight Media artist program and has not completed final submissions at the time of being selected for this program.
  • The filmmaker works for Firelight Media or PBS as a director, full-time employee, or board member.
  • The filmmaker does not own most of the intellectual property of the film.

Selection Criteria

• They will consider projects that address a range of themes and issues.
• They will consider projects with diverse aesthetic approaches (verité, essay, experimental, research, personal, historical, etc.)
• They will consider ambitious projects or projects with a narrow focus.
• They will take into account proposals from filmmakers who live and work most of the time in the US, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia and Brazil.
• They will take into account proposals from filmmakers of all refugee and immigrant statuses, recognizing that migratory flows are necessary due to the global challenges and forces that they are trying to overcome.
• They take note when projects are socially relevant, formally innovative, address or implicate underrepresented issues or communities, and are accountable to the affected communities their films represent.

For more information, visit Firelight Media.