Filmmaker Support, Re-Present Media

FILMMAKER SUPPORT

Our professional development activities include public and cohort-based programs, including mentoring, masterclasses, and workshops.

Current Activities

The For Us, By Us San Francisco Filmmaker Incubator is a one-year fellowship program that supports a cohort of San Francisco documentary filmmakers from historically marginalized backgrounds who are telling personal stories of communities within the City. From October 2026-October 2027, fellows will participate in workshops, receive mentoring, and use $5,000 stipends to strategically advance […]

Register now for the Reinvention for Disruptive Times webinar series! Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media are presenting a 4-part webinar series focusing on practical solutions and strategies to adjust independent filmmaking to the current climate. The series will look at what we can learn from the past and present—and strategize about new ways to […]

We are excited to announce our 2025 For Us, By Us fellows! The For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator, presented by Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media, is a seven month intensive that supports a cohort of local documentary filmmakers of different backgrounds who are telling personal stories from Bay Area communities not often seen […]

Filmmaker Updates

Seeds of Ancestral Memory, directed by For Us, By Us fellow Diana Diroy, was awarded a 2026 Berkeley Film Foundation Documentary Grant. Berkeley Film Foundation is supporting 30 documentary projects. The selected projects explore questions of identity, community, history, displacement, resistance, creativity, family, and belonging, bringing distinctive voices and often underrepresented stories to the screen. […]

For Us, By Us fellow Thanh Tran was selected for the Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Fellowship. Fellows receive a $20,000 grant and the Artist Accelerator Program’s year-round support: hands-on guidance and bespoke project support, access to script consultancies, invitations to professional development programming, and a stipend to attend the 2027 Sundance Film […]

Re-Take Oakland filmmaker Jenn Lee Smith is a co-executive producer on the film Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, which will open in cinemas across the United States on September 2. The film will screen in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and more than 35 other cities following its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Festival. Sara […]

headshot of Angie Morales, Afro-Latinx woman with curly hair

Angie Morales, editor

Editor Development Program

Our Editor Development Program supports an emerging BIPOC editor in editing a feature length documentary film through weekly mentorship meetings, technical editing advice, and a participant stipend.

Doc Watchers

projector showing a film

We gather documentary film professionals to watch and discuss recent and past documentary films, including works-in-progress. We meet in downtown Oakland.

If you are interested in joining, please fill out our contact form and mention “Doc Watchers.”

For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator

The For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator nurtures a cohort of Bay Area documentary filmmakers from different backgrounds who are telling personal stories from communities in the Bay Area not often seen in media.

This seven-month intensive offers workshops, mentoring, and filmmaker stipends.

Learn more about the 2025 fellows!

LEARN MORE

About the 2023-2024 Incubator

In 2023, Re-Present Media and Filmmakers Collaborative SF launched the For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator with an inaugural cohort of seven filmmakers.

Following the six month program, we collaborated with the filmmakers to present community screenings and discussions in our event series, For Us, By Us: Our Beloved Communities.

Learn more

Past Activities

Re-Take Oakland (2019-2021)

Re-Take Oakland was a two-year public education and filmmaker mentoring program. Documentary filmmakers of color created short personal films featuring stories of individuals, families, and communities in Oakland. They presented these films in collaboration with community partners in post-film dialogues.

We focused on emerging filmmakers of color living in the San Francisco Bay Area, with priority given to Oaklanders identifying as Asian American (including South, East, and Southeast Asian), mixed race, and LGBTQ+ people of color.

Throughout the program, we offered master classes, film screenings with private filmmaker talks, and mentoring with award-winning documentary filmmakers. Modest stipends were available to filmmakers for production costs.

Learn more

Re-Take Oakland filmmakers presented their films at Oaktown Stories, a film screening and community dialogue series.

advocating for personal storytelling from underrepresented communities