Advocating For BIPOC Women And Nonbinary Professionals Working In The Global Documentary Film Industry
BGDM works year round to enrich our community and advocate on behalf of our members, and to shift the homogenous culture and power of the documentary field. We help remove economic, professional, and social barriers for BIPOC women and nonbinary filmmakers by acting as an advocate for these artists in places where there are often none.
artist support
MafiaMind
Originally named Skill Share, then Mafia Mastermind, the peer-to-peer incubator engages members in intimate discussions about their careers, creative plans, and holistic goals. In this multi-week program, members share their growth processes, skills, contacts, and insider knowledge while offering each other support and accountability. This program was created to disrupt the isolation, tokenism, and neglect that often discourages BIPOC creatives and professionals from pursuing careers in the film industry.
BGDM Sustainable Artist Fellowship
The BGDM Sustainable Artist Fellowship enables members working as directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers to have the financial stability, industry relationships, and professional resources it takes to have a long term career. This year-long fellowship aims to support filmmakers at a turning point in their career and to embolden their creative practice or professional development. These artists present unique points of view through a demonstrated artistic purpose and have the great potential to contribute to a shifting documentary field.
Supported by:
BGDM Black Directors Fellowship
The BGDM Black Directors Fellowship brings greater visibility, resources, creative enrichment, and professional development to Black members working as directors, and to help propel their projects forward. This year-long fellowship aims to support projects that are steeped in the Black experience, and whose director’s craft, storytelling ability, and unique point of view reflects and uplifts Black narratives or perspectives.
Craft and skill building workshops
Throughout the year, BGDM works with partners in curating additional skill-building opportunities for our members like Feedback Loop, Collective Lens Impact Producing Sessions and Konsonant Music Film Seminar. Our fellows also give back to the larger community by through Masterclasses with topics covering producing the first feature to career transitions and starting your own production company.
Reparative Futures
BGDM joins Multitude Films, in collaboration with BLIS Collective, in the production of a new series of documentary short films offering transformative visions for reparations in the United States. Inspired by the Black-led movement for reparations and the Indigenous-led land back movement, the series will offer creative reparative initiatives, relationships, and policies that seek to reshape our realities.
COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
Private Online Community
Housed on Mighty Networks, BGDM’s new private social network replaces the longstanding Facebook Group as a dedicated space for dialogue, knowledge-sharing, and connection. Community building is at our core because we know these relationships are the seeds that will sow greater change in the documentary industry. Our nurturing community seeks to provide a sense of belonging, purpose, safety, and strength. Members can develop their careers and projects in a supportive environment where they exchange invaluable resources, hold critical conversations, find jobs, hire each other, get feedback, and learn new skills.
Industry Access & Visibility
The Industry Access & Visibility initiative enables members to attend and navigate film festivals and industry conferences while in community with each other. These are the spaces where relationships are made, ideas are developed, and potential partners are identified, so it’s crucial that our members are “in the room”. We help members access these spaces by providing travel stipends, discounted passes, subsidized housing, and invitations to networking events. For visibility, we create public guides of member projects and distribute Meet the Members to industry stakeholders.
We also host BGDM in the Mix, previously industry mixers, that connects member projects with various industry professionals that can support their work in a specific capacity. In a casual, inviting setting, members have the opportunity to practice their pitches and potentially bring in further support for their projects.
Talent Directory
The BGDM Talent Directory is a public tool for finding thousands of diverse, multilingual filmmakers and industry stakeholders at every level to track, hire, collaborate with, and invest in. It’s searchable by profession, experience level, geography, languages spoken, and other identity demographics. Launched in response to #OscarsSoWhite and the summer of 2020’s "reckoning on race" in the film industry, the BGDM Directory aims to make our members more visible and accessible, and to provide a powerful resource to anyone who wants to ensure that this field is diverse, equitable, just, and inclusive.
Pause & Play
In a time when burnout, loneliness and uncertainty of what’s next in our industry is at unprecedented heights, the act of pausing is vital for the sustainability of this work. Pause & Play begins with the question: what does it mean to center rest and joy in the documentary industry? The program curates physical and virtual spaces that practice the ideas and systems of care we are in the act of imagining. Our hope is a documentary ecosystem that has tangible and consistent outlets and resources for film workers to experience holistic support, rest, care and joy.
Shorts Showcase
Short films often don't receive the press, attention or distribution that they deserve. BGDM is committed to showcasing short films from our members on the big screen and virtually, amplifying the next generation of BIPOC voices and stories. Working with key partners that share our vision, selected filmmakers are compensated for their creation and event participation.
ADVOCACY & IMPACT
Jobs Board
In the Fall of 2021, we launched the BGDM Jobs Portal. This critical resource is a space where the industry and members alike can post verified jobs, available exclusively to our community. Opportunities range from full time salaried positions to short-term contracts, and includes access to funding, grants, retreats, labs, and professional development training. BGDM is looking to expand its offerings to support our communities' professional development and well-being, as well as increase diversity and representation within the nonfiction field.
Pay Transparency Project
In partnership with The Video Consortium, The Pay Transparency Project (PTP) was launched at the 2022 Gotham Week. PTP is a tool that offers nonfiction video professionals insight into current industry compensations and parity practices. The initiative grew out of a desire by our collective communities to further move the documentary and nonfiction video fields towards greater equity, justice, inclusion and transparency. It is our hope that over time this resource will benefit early-career individuals in building their rates, as well as veterans who may be transitioning from full-time to freelance work. Department heads or recruiters who are looking to formalize standards will also contribute to a more equitable and sustainable industry by utilizing this database.
Community Organizing
Community at BGDM often turns to collective activism. When instances of injustice arise for one of us they usually speak to the greater injustices happening to many of us. As an organization we join in the solidarity of these calls to action, and find ways to support our members in challenging and calling for industry wide structural changes.