For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator
Presented by Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media
Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media are collaborating to present the For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator, a six month intensive to support a diverse cohort of seven local documentary filmmakers who are telling personal stories from underrepresented communities in the Bay Area. From March-August 2023, the filmmakers will participate in workshops, receive mentoring, and be given stipends to strategically use for their films.
The six selected projects highlight intersections of race, class, and gender from across the Bay Area. We are thrilled to support these filmmakers’ stories for Bay Area communities by Bay Area filmmakers. With each film comes an opportunity to realistically represent those who have been underrepresented and provide insight into how we can better understand each other and ourselves.
About the Program Team
Filmmakers Collaborative SF is a nonprofit media organization with a mission to catalyze positive change through the power of filmmaking.
Re-Present Media is an organization dedicated to advocating for personal storytelling from underrepresented communities in documentary film and nonfiction media.
About the Films
MANILATOWN MANANG
When I-Hotel Tenant Activist Jeanette Lazam learns that a vacancy has opened up at the rebuilt International Hotel, she embarks on a road trip to claim back the home she was forcibly evicted from 44 years ago.
BIENVENIDA ABUELITA
Two generations after Celia assimilated to the United States her queer grandchild Megan battles distance, language and religion to recover what remains of their Mexican heritage before Celia’s body and mind erode from terminal cancer.
SAMMY’S FINAL ARRANGEMENT
To save his relationship with flowers, a decades long talented florist must come to a decision and retire his career and give up what he loves.
WE JUST WANT TO BE
A trans survivor of experimental conversion therapy from the 1960s makes an unlikely friend in the present-day Bay Area, and the two go on a journey to explore their shared history of clinical experimentation, practices that continue to shape the lives of trans youth today.
SAFE HARBOR
A single mother has dreams of setting sail on her new home with her young daughter and cats, but must first juggle her time and various jobs and stay afloat financially to provide for her family.
SARANAM GACCHÂMI (I TAKE REFUGE)
An enterprising Buddhist Monk defies all odds to set up one of the largest Tibetan Monasteries in the Bay Area to preserve the endangered Tibetan culture and traditions.
