NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 16: Emmy Award-Winning writer, creator and actor Lena Waithe and Indeed’s ... [+]
In 2015 #OscarsSoWhite brought attention to a stark lack of diversity in Hollywood that seemed glaringly conspicuous to everyone except perhaps the overwhelmingly white male power structure. Since then, diversity in film and television (both behind and in front of the camera) has been under heightened scrutiny.
In 2021 job site powerhouse Indeed partnered with Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and actor Lena Waithe and her company Hillman Grad Productions along with 271 Films to create Rising Voices, a BIPOC filmmaker career accelerator program. They’ve just announced the launch of Indeed: Rising Voices Season 3 which will focus on the “Future of Work.”
“Indeed will give each of the 10 chosen filmmakers up to $100,000 to produce their film which will debut at a New York City film festival. In addition, they will be mentored by Lena Waithe, executives at Hillman Grad and 271 Films, run by sisters Constanza and Doménica Castro. The filmmakers will be compensated $5,000 for writing an original script and $5,000 for directing,” their announcement explains.
Applications are open until November 11, 2022.
Film production power players like Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele and Ava Duvernay are in fact exceptional in both talent and rarity. “There's a lot of nepotism and gatekeeping in filmmaking, so just finding a way into the industry has been a challenge, explains Rising Voices Season 2 participant and Brooklyn-based filmmaker Travis Wood. “As a young Black man, I have always wanted my filmmaking to have a strong stance and POV, and I think finding the right opportunities has been a challenge as well. Whether that's from financing a project or using my portfolio to secure commercial work, in the last couple of years, more and more opportunities have been created to highlight diverse voices, including Indeed with the Rising Voices program, which has been a huge help to my filmmaking career.”
Indeed has arguably stepped up to meet this challenge in a unique way. “In our work, we see everyday that talent is universal but opportunity is not,” insists Chris Hyams, CEO of Indeed. “Rising Voices came from a simple idea. We could spend $1 million on a TV ad—what if instead we invested $1 million in 10 BIPOC filmmakers to create short films about the meaning of work?” Hyams explains that since the program’s inception in 2021, more than 1,000 jobs have been created throughout the filmmaking process.
Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Foundation also helps to bridge the “connection gap” that so many BIPOC filmmakers face by offering valuable mentorship and information sharing that eludes many Black and Brown artists without an elite pedigree, familial connections or other professional advantages. “While the industry has made great strides in advancing diversity of representation in front of and behind the camera, it’s harder for creatives from underrepresented backgrounds to gain access to the training and opportunity traditionally afforded to majority communities,” explains Lacy Lew Nguyen Wright, executive director, Hillman Grad Foundation. “Our work doesn’t end until BIPOC communities have equitable pathways into the industry that we’ve been systemically barred from for decades.” Wright hopes that the program will not just benefit program participants but also enable them to “use their platforms to open up pathways to the other creatives that follow them.”
Only two seasons in, the Rising Voices program has already yielded tangible success as participating filmmakers have been recognized from prominent film festivals including Tribeca, Sundance and the Pan African Film Festival. Program alumni have continued on to direct episodes of The Chi on Showtime; become a Netflix staff writer and directed the Disney+ show American Born Chinese among other notable achievements. While the program offers invaluable practical learning, perhaps the most significant benefit realized is the personal sense of pride and confidence gained through the program’s reinforcement of their talent, brilliance and worth.
For Wood the acknowledgement and validation of simply being accepted into the program was just the beginning of many benefits to come. “I come from a very DIY filmmaking background and the program operates as a mini studio, so I learned a lot about that next level of filmmaking, getting closer to how traditional television and film productions operate,” he explains. “We have a lot of high caliber mentors that are reading our scripts and advising our productions, so just working closely with them, I definitely walked away a better filmmaker.”
The program also enabled Wood to leave with a professional work sample. “Having my short film Black Santa can show people what I'm capable of doing and has already started opening up conversations that will hopefully lead to more film, commercial and television opportunities,” insists Wood. Certainly, having access to mentors like Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and actor Lena Waithe is invaluable. Wood says that he often reflects on the best advice she gave him during the process. “In one of the first calls we had for the program, Lena said we should make something that really sticks with people, that they leave the theater thinking about it. Throughout the program that was always my guiding light,” he says.
Many would argue that filmmaking is one of the hardest nuts to crack when it comes to creating equitable workplaces. Film and television productions are individual, discrete events and historically, there has been a closed club of power players that control financing, creative opportunities and decisions around which projects get a green light and which don’t. This one program is challenging that status quo—one short film at a time.
