New England-based directors and producers seeking production and post-production funds for feature-length (40+ min) nonfiction film and video projects are encouraged to apply for LEF’s next grant deadline on January 16, 2026.

The Moving Image Fund’s Production and Post-production grants have a two-part application process. Filmmakers interested in applying for project support must first submit a brief Letter of Inquiry (LOI).

From these initial inquiries, a smaller pool of applicants will be notified on Friday, March 6 about whether they are invited to submit a full application.

A maximum of eight (8) grants of $15,000 each will be awarded to projects in the Production phase, and a maximum of six (6) grants of $25,000 each will be awarded to projects in the Post-production phase during LEF’s major grants review. Please note that in order to be eligible for Post-production support, the project for which you are applying must have received previous LEF support.

• Production funds may be used for shooting picture and sound, early stage editing, equipment costs, materials, travel, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise)
• Post-production funds may be used for editing costs, rights, online, sound mix, color correction, transfers, distribution strategy, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise). To be eligible for Post-production funding, the project must have already been supported by LEF at a previous stage (Early Development, Pre-production, or Production)

More information about this opportunity is available here.

Deadline: Friday, January 16 at 11:59pm

For more instructions, visit LEF’s How to Apply page.

The Moving Image Fund’s eligibility criteria are:

• Projects must be long format with projected running times of 40 minutes or more.

• Primary creative personnel (director and/or producer) must reside in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont).

• Projects must not be commissioned or work-for-hire, and the director/producer creative team must have creative control of the project.

• Projects with directors or producers enrolled in high school, undergraduate or master’s degree programs at the time of application are ineligible for consideration.

• Multi-channel or installation work will not be considered.
• For prior grantees, a final report on previous LEF grant funding is required.

Still not sure if you’re eligible? Take a look at our FAQ page.

Virtual Info Session

To learn more about the Moving Image Fund, join LEF staff for a 60-minute virtual info session hosted via Zoom at 3:00pm ET on Thursday, December 4.

This session will include live captioning (CART). Please let us know by Monday, November 24 if you’d like to request ASL interpretation (SVI) for this meeting.

Heads Up for Boston-area Nonfiction Filmmakers!

The Harvard Film Study Center-LEF Fellowship, an opportunity for one Boston-area filmmaker to receive a $15,000 grant and access to FSC’s pool of production and post-production equipment and community, will be accepting applications starting in early December.

You can stay up-to-date on this and more opportunities through LEF’s newsletter or by following LEF on Instagram.

The post Now Accepting MIF Letters of Inquiry for Production & Post-production through January 16 appeared first on LEF Foundation.

The LEF Foundation has awarded 13 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $52,500 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers.

The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in feature-length documentary films that demonstrate excellence in technique, a resonant story or idea, and originality of artistic vision and voice. The most recent round of awards includes eight grants of $5,000 to projects at the Pre-production stage and five grants of $2,500 to projects at the Early Development stage. 

The projects this round reflect on our current moment: often precipitous, a turning point, a possibility for new directions. The cohort includes imaginative works that layer artifice onto the real to reveal larger truths, films that utilize verite modes to patiently observe the workings of life in front of the camera, and ambitious projects tracing the slow progress of thoughts and actions over time.   

PRE-PRODUCTION

Feu de Lune

Directed by Dominic Yarabe

Produced by Eliza Soros

Feu de Lune follows two ten-year old twins in a rural West African village as they reenact an epic myth to preserve their community’s fading oral histories. But the spell is broken when their play reveals a buried secret—a civil conflict largely erased from national memory. 

Green Light

Directed by Anna Barsan

Produced by Paige Wood, Kate Levy

Green Light follows the expansion of a video surveillance network in Detroit, investigating the promises of public safety while probing the tensions between visibility and control. Through the lens of a city under constant watch, the film asks: Who feels safe? Who is seen? And what remains beyond the camera’s gaze? 

Letters of Elsewhere

Directed by Abhi Indrekar

Produced by Dakxin Chhara, Michaela Henry

Caught in immigration limbo in America, a filmmaker unable to return home to Chharanagar turns his lens on the stillness around him—capturing the beauty, grief, and ghosts of exile—while composing poetic letters to the homeland he can only now visit through memory.

Rompío Fuente en la Noche (Water Breaks at Night)

Directed and Produced by Rosalyn Negrón

Intimate portraits of pregnant women in Vieques, a Puerto Rican island without a hospital, once a site of U.S. military exercises. As they prepare for childbirth, they hope for safe births amid the lingering threats of contamination and hurricanes. For them, bringing new life into Vieques is both a blessing and an act of defiance.

The Eye of Eternity

Directed and Produced by Matteo Moretti

Three Shakers sustain a centuries-old faith as their Maine village becomes a haven for seekers—a former Shaker, Franciscan friars, and other kindred spirits. In a world that often writes them off as relics, this documentary offers a rare, present-tense portrait of belief, belonging, and the quiet strength it takes to carry a fragile tradition into an uncertain future.

The Low Season

Directed by Bernardo Ruiz

Produced by Bernardo Ruiz, Andrea Patiño Contreras

A woman from the future arrives in present day Queens, New York in order to lead immigrant families to safety as bounty hunters prey on them.

The sea will bring the miracle

Directed by Felipe Esparza Pérez

Produced by Lady Vinces Cruz

Carmen is a young widow living in Puerto Eten, a town marked by state neglect. When Li Guang, a shipwrecked Chinese fisherman, is rescued and secretly protected by Carmen, his arrival coincides with alleged miraculous apparitions of the Divine Child wrongly attributed to Aurelio, Carmen’s young son. She must face the pressure of a community that sees in her son a divine sign, while struggling to protect him from the fanaticism and growing tensions in the village.

The Swimmer

Directed and Produced by Sara Jordenö

“Tell your story. Tell it again. Tell it anyway.” Arash, an Afghan refugee and aspiring competitive swimmer, asks Sara, a filmmaker, to make a film about his life in limbo, and his dream deferred. 7 years later, Arash disappears. Together with Ahmad, an actor, Sara attempts to re-tell Arash’s story in his absence. A feverishly surreal imagined conversation between a documentarian and their participant, The SWIMMER asks hard questions about the labor and accountability of the artist-as-witness.

EARLY DEVELOPMENT

98 Days

Directed by Cashmere Jasmine

Produced by Andy Fraser, Cashmere Jasmine, RJ Dawson

98 Days is a hybrid documentary tracing activist-filmmaker RJ Dawson’s journey from the 2020 Grand Park occupation where Black Unity organizers and unhoused residents clashed with police and internal divisions to his current work with the Center of Independent Living Storytellers Initiative, a disability justice media project confronting 2025’s attacks on healthcare access.

Ancestral Days

Directed by Bronte Stahl

Produced Isabella Rinaldi

Francesco leads personalized ancestral tours in Sicily for Americans in search of their “roots”. Among the bureaucratic, parochial, pastoral, and familial spaces his work takes his clients, ironies and absurdities emerge and invite a reflection on gentrification, immigration and the act of remaining.

Combat Zones (Working Title)

Directed by Stephen Wardell

Produced by Matthew Hipps

When a movie theater is removed from a community, what is left behind? To better understand the contemporary landscape of queer public space, we trace the remains of X-rated movie theaters in Boston and reanimate the fantasies that populated them.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Directed and Produced by Asha Tamirisa 

“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” is an experimental documentary that explores wildfire smoke as a means for how to sense and make sense of the climate crises. Smoke is quickly becoming a quotidian aspect of human life as wildfires proliferate in many parts of the world. Drawing from interviews, sensory ethnographic methodologies, and materialist media practices, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” will allow for critical and affective engagement with this growing transnational dilemma.

Writing for My Mother

Directed and Produced by Natalie Pattillo

WRITING FOR MY MOTHER is a feature-length documentary that examines the declining literacy rates in the United States. Director Natalie Pattillo—whose mother faces literacy challenges—is uplifting the heartfelt and timely stories of adult learners and their children, as well as the advocates fighting for the right to read, write, and vote.

At LEF’s August deadline for Pre-production and Early Development, 52 eligible applications were received from filmmakers working throughout New England. Three peer readers from the local filmmaking community who represent a diversity of perspectives on documentary were invited to review, discuss, and make recommendations on the applications. These peer evaluations informed LEF staff’s final grant decisions.

“Independent filmmakers are a resilient bunch who know they haven’t chosen a straight-forward path,” said Lyda Kuth, LEF Executive Director.  “At this moment, they persevere to make work despite widespread cuts to federal funding and fewer opportunities to show their work via public media. At LEF, we see this first-hand, as evidenced by the wealth of documentary projects that continue to be made here in New England. We value their contribution and feel lucky to have them here.” 

This is the sixth year that the Moving Image Fund has included support at the Early Development stage, giving initial seed funding to filmmakers who have not yet had a chance to shoot or edit sample footage for their current projects.

“Our production team is grateful for this critical, early support from LEF as we undertake an ambitious project in challenging times for independent film,” said grantee Andrea Patiño Contreras.

“LEF’s support has made it possible for me to keep creating independent, creative nonfiction work that would otherwise be nearly impossible to sustain,” said grantee Anna Barsan. “In a challenging funding and political landscape, they’ve been steady, generous, and truly engaged with artists and their work.”

All applicants who applied for LEF funding for either Pre-production or Early Development will have the option to receive review notes from staff to learn how their proposals were evaluated by the peer reviewers and to ask any questions. 

“As a regional funder, LEF New England has the privilege of learning about a wide array of new feature-length nonfiction films made by a diverse community of New England directors and producers who are just beginning to seek funds for their projects,” said LEF Program Director Gen Carmel. “Because of our local scale and position as the first source of grant support for many projects, we know how crucial it is to be able to share constructive peer review feedback with all of the filmmakers who request it at this stage.”

In addition to this group of grantees, LEF will also award $270,000 to 12 projects in Production and Post-production later in the fiscal year, following the next January 2025 application deadline. In total, LEF plans to distribute $322,500 in funding to documentary productions over the course of its 2026 fiscal year.

The next Moving Image Fund grant deadline will be Friday, January 16, 2026 for New England-based directors and producers seeking Production and Post-production support for feature-length documentaries.

You can find more details regarding LEF Moving Image Fund guidelines and eligibility on our website.

You can subscribe to LEF’s mailing list to receive a monthly newsletter and the latest updates about grantee news, filmmaker opportunities, and calls for Moving Image Fund submissions. For more information on the Foundation or its funded projects, please contact Program Officer Matthew LaPaglia at matthew@lef-foundation.org.

The post The LEF Foundation has awarded 13 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $52,500 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers appeared first on LEF Foundation.

LEF New England is now welcoming applications for Pre-production and Early Development grants through the Moving Image Fund.

A maximum of (6) Pre-production grants of $5,000 each and (6) Early Development grants of $2,500 each will be awarded for the use of:

• research
• travel
• location scouting
• script or storyboard development
• experimentation with shooting picture and sound
• distribution planning
• fundraising
• creating a trailer
• schedule and budget development
• staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise)

Pre-production applications require a current work sample from the project you are proposing for funding. Early Development applications require two past work samples, and current work samples are not accepted.

The Moving Image Fund’s eligibility criteria are:

• Projects must be long format with projected running times of 40 minutes or more.
• Primary creative personnel (director and/or producer) must reside in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont).
• Projects must not be commissioned or work-for-hire, and the director/producer creative team must have creative control of the project.
• Projects with directors or producers enrolled in high school, undergraduate or master’s degree programs at the time of application are ineligible for consideration.
• Multi-channel or installation work will not be considered.
• For prior grantees, a final report on previous LEF grant funding is required.

Still not sure if you’re eligible? Take a look at our FAQ page.

You can also reach out to LEF Program Officer Matthew LaPaglia and LEF Program Director Gen Carmel with any questions.

Deadline to Apply:

Friday, August 8 at 11:59pm

Please review the Moving Image Fund guidelines and take a look at our frequently asked questions.

Please note: The Moving Image Fund’s submission portal has moved. 

Now, through an account with LEF’s grant interface, you’ll be able to apply for funding, view your previous grant support, and complete final reports, all in one place.  

For more instructions, visit LEF’s How to Apply page.

Virtual Info Session

To learn more about the Moving Image Fund, join LEF staff for a virtual info session hosted via Zoom from 12:00–1:00pm ET on July 14.

This session will include live captioning (CART). Please let us know by Monday, July 7 at 9am if you’d like to request ASL interpretation (SVI) for this meeting.

The post Now Accepting Pre-production & Early Development Applications for 2025 Summer/Fall Grant Cycle appeared first on LEF Foundation.

The LEF Foundation has awarded 14 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $270,000 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers.

The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in feature-length documentary films that demonstrate excellence in technique, strong storytelling ability, and originality of artistic vision and voice. The most recent round of awards includes eight grants of $15,000 to projects at the Production stage and six grants of $25,000 to projects at the Post-production stage. 

The grantees for this round of the Moving Image Fund include films grounded in singular lived experiences and films that attempt to unpack much larger systems and structures that shape our world. All of the films are deeply rooted in their respective places, whether they are locations steeped in personal or political history, enduring communities, or geographies that extend beyond immediate perception. This round of grants emphasizes the unique lenses of New England-based filmmakers, reflecting a broad diversity of approaches to nonfiction filmmaking, spanning patient verite, the inquisitively essayistic, personal lyricism, and self-reflexive forms.

PRODUCTION

Blindball (w/t)

Directed and Produced by Carla Borrás (MA) and Jessica Massa

25 athletes. 6 months. 9 spots on Team USA. More than a gold medal at stake.  In the Bronx, an under-resourced team of baseball players — some born blind, others having recently lost their sight — train for the world cup of blind baseball. The athletes, men and women ages 20 to 70, face obstacles on and off the field in this genre-defying documentary about what it looks, sounds, and feels like to live boldly without vision.

Caretakers

Directed by Ambrus Hernadi (MA)

Produced by Rita Balogh

Caretakers is an observational documentary following two Hungarian women, Zsuzsa and Beata, as they navigate the hidden struggles of undocumented caregiving in Germany and in the U.S. Balancing family ties, isolation, and an uncertain future, their journeys expose the harsh reality of migrant caregivers, revealing a system that benefits from their work while refusing their recognition.

Eurydice in the Underworld

Directed by Felicity E. Palma (RI)

Eurydice in the Underworld is a handmade experimental film that examines the effects of cancer treatment on a young working-class woman’s body. Using performance, soundscape, interventions with the lens and the filmic body, and the texts and diaries of Kathy Acker who died from the disease, the film explores notions of isolation and alienation set within a landscape that is intimately connected to the artist’s own cancer treatment and heritage.

HANNAH

Directed by Siobhan Landry (MA) and Angie Morrill

Produced by Siobhan Landry and Carolyn Shadid Lewis

In 1697 Hannah Dustin was taken captive. She returned in possession of ten native scalps, including those of women and children. HANNAH documents how the Hannah Dustin story is presented today, alongside a dialogue between female-identified artists, both native and white, who are drawn in by the legend. The film is an unsparing consideration of colonial violence as well as a creative and humorous exploration of how these kinds of stories might be told differently.

Heaven Through the Backdoor

Directed by Anna Fitch and Banker White (MA)

Produced by Sara Dosa, Hannah Roodman, and Banker White

Part myth, part documentary, HEAVEN THROUGH THE BACKDOOR explores the mystery of death through the unconventional friendship of Anna & Yo, two kindred spirits born 49 years apart. Using intricately built miniature sets, puppetry, and other creations, the film juxtaposes intimate vérité of Yo’s last year with Anna’s wildly imaginative interpretations of her stories. It is in this invented, magical world that our film takes place.

Highest Nature

Directed by Elle Rinaldi (CT)

Following the flight paths of a young bird watcher and a birds of prey showing duo, we observe two very different breeds of environmentalists: one who observes, classifies, and questions the environment and our relationship to it from a distance; and two committed to education through captivity, training, and showmanship. Both of their unique approaches reveal the natural world’s beauty and brutality, teaching us how to look, listen, and be better creatures in our environment.

Memory of Lightning

Directed by Riccardo Giacconi (MA)

Produced by Fabrizio Polpettini

The film follows a 30-year-old radio producer as she records voices and sounds in a small rural village, summoning the distant memory of a violent act that the local community still grapples with. Through her microphones, she facilitates a sort of séance, where the past is brought to the surface through conversations and by listening to soundscapes at various crime scenes as if searching for phantom radiation that still resonates in the air. The film aims to evoke the practice of radio-making in the form of a portrait within a portrait.

The Teachers Project (working title)

Directed by Luke Meyer (MA)

Produced by Luke Meyer, Raoul Meyer, Tom Davis, and Jenna Sauers

THE TEACHERS PROJECT is a compelling, character-driven journey into the lives of American educators as they navigate the intensifying culture war that has enveloped the nation’s schools since 2020. As political battles over sanctioned ideas, books, and lesson plans rage from national headlines to local school boards, the film reveals the devastating consequences of this chaos and conflict for teachers, students, communities, and the future of American education.

POST-PRODUCTION

Beyond the Fold

Directed and Produced by Ross McClean

Produced by Bronte Stahl (RI), Ross McClean, and Roisín Geraghty

Ryan finds peace working with sheep inside a Northern Irish prison. Faced with a hostile environment upon release, he looks to find a place for himself. 

Chelsea (working title)

Directed by Jenny Alexander and Sabrina Avilés (MA)

Chelsea is a Latinx immigrant city in New England that has long been overlooked. Three community leaders are fighting against the myths and realities that face their community to uplift their city.  What happens when you believe in yourself when no one else does?

Cosmic Moose and Grizzly Bears Ville

Directed by Amber Bemak (MA)

Produced by Zoe Sua Cho (CT)

Peter Valentine, living on disability in an apartment, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park, claiming he couldn’t leave because it was his electromagnetic laboratory. Eventually, MIT gifted him the entire building, moving it to another street. Peter was diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life.

Early Mourning, Tarpon Springs

Directed and Produced by Jodie Mack (VT)

Traversing people and peepholes, socioeconomic and school class, pressure and pleasure, witness and whiteness, this animated, auto-erotic and auto-ethnographic feature film locates strange threads between mediumship and the photographic medium. A bereaved sibling approaching the 30-year anniversary of her sister’s car-crash death sets out to create a homespun epic funeral, driving around schools and strip malls of Florida and uncovering familial, sexual, ecological, and historical ghosts.

My Skin and I

Directed by Milton Guillén and Fiona Guy Hall (VT)

Produced by Milton Guillén, Fiona Guy Hall, May Odeh, and Zorana Mušikić 

An exiled Nicaraguan music producer living in Berlin pursues a dangerous creative obsession that he fears conflicts with the needs of his family.

The River

Directed by Caitlyn Greene

Produced by Sara Archambault (RI), Caitlyn Greene, and Department of Motion Pictures 

THE RIVER is a vivid, character-driven film about Louisiana’s complex relationship with the Mississippi River.

“As the Moving Image Fund rounds out its first quarter-century of supporting filmmakers in New England, we find ourselves in a climate that is threatening to independent creative voices,” said Lyda Kuth, LEF Executive Director. “The films receiving grants this year are a remarkable cross section of the vibrancy and creative risk-taking that LEF will continue to champion in the region and beyond.” 

“I grew up in New England, surrounded by film programs that were supported by the LEF Foundation. From DocYard to CIFF and beyond, the artists whose stories came out of these communities showed me the power of cinema to open minds to lives different than ours, while also illuminating our shared humanity,” said grantee Carolina Borrás. “My co-director Jessica Massa and I could not be more honored to now have the chance to be the storytellers, with the support of this LEF Moving Image Grant.”

The formal grant review process began in early winter when LEF received 96 eligible letters of inquiry at its January 2025 deadline for Production and Post-production. These proposals were evaluated by a group of three New England-based filmmakers serving as peer readers, in addition to LEF staff.

Of these initial inquiries, 30 projects were invited by LEF staff to submit a full application, including 22 finalists in Production and 8 finalists in Post-production. All 30 full applications were then evaluated by a peer review panel made up of filmmakers and professionals from across the U.S. who represent a diversity of perspectives on documentary. Peer reviewers remain anonymous and change at every round. 

“At LEF, we aim to provide support for a community of filmmakers over time by going beyond the grant to offer all of our applicants 1:1 peer review feedback, guidance, and connections to other capacity-building resources,” said LEF Program Director Genevieve Carmel. 

“Having support from LEF at the pre-production, production, and post-production phases of this piece has enabled my work to travel conceptually deeper, formally larger,” said grantee Jodie Mack. “Through their support, I am able to advance my craft in the pursuit of animated nonfiction.”

“While the Moving Image Fund is structured around project-based support,” said Carmel, “we know the ripple effects that offering both grant funding and constructive feedback can have – beyond propelling a film project forward, it can encourage the creative growth of a filmmaker, deepen their contributions within a regional creative economy, and build recognition for their voice within the larger field of filmmaking.”

In addition to this group of grantees, LEF also awarded $47,500 to 11 projects in Early Development and Pre-production earlier in the fiscal year. In total, LEF will be distributing $317,500 in funding to documentary productions over the course of its 2024–25 fiscal year. After 25 years since its inception, the Moving Image Fund has awarded over 500 grants totaling more than $5.5 million in filmmaker support.

The next Moving Image Fund grant deadline is Friday, August 8 for New England-based directors and producers seeking Pre-production and Early Development support for feature-length documentaries.

You can find more details regarding LEF Moving Image Fund guidelines and eligibility on our website.

You can subscribe to LEF’s mailing list to receive a monthly newsletter and the latest updates about grantee news, filmmaker opportunities, and calls for Moving Image Fund submissions. For more information on the Foundation or its funded projects, please contact Program Officer Matthew LaPaglia at matthew@lef-foundation.org.

The post LEF has awarded 14 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $270,000 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers appeared first on LEF Foundation.

LEF is delighted to join the Film Study Center at Harvard University in announcing that Jessica Hankey has been selected as the 2025-26 recipient of the FSC-LEF Fellowship. Filmed on US cross-country trains, Hankey’s film in progress, SUNSET LIMITED, moves through changing American landscapes and social environments where strangers connect across cultural, economic, and technological divides–until their station is called. And where passengers collaborate in front of and behind the camera as boundaries erode inside the train.

Jessica Hankey is a Cambridge-based filmmaker whose projects use improvisation and performance with non-professional actors to consider how we interact with broader power structures. Being in relation with others, intimacy, and formal experimentation animate this work. Hankey attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow. She has exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Vox Populi, and Bowdoin College. Her films have screened at Anthology Film Archives, Slamdance, and the Atlanta Film Festival, and have been reviewed in Artforum, Glasstire, and the Chart. She co-edited the anthology Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance (MIT Press 2023) and is the publisher of Orbis Editions, an artist-run small press.

The FSC-LEF Fellowship is awarded annually to one Boston-area nonfiction filmmaker not currently affiliated with Harvard. The filmmaker receives a $15,000 grant (jointly funded by FSC and LEF Foundation), access to FSC production and post-production equipment, and the opportunity to participate in Harvard FSC work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and other activities.

The post Announcing the 2025–26 Harvard FSC-LEF Fellow: Jessica Hankey appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Attending the seminar will be three LEF New England Flaherty Fellows: Morgan Hulquist, Matteo Moretti, and Sasha Tycko. (Read more about the fellows below). Since 2009, LEF has partnered with the Flaherty to support the participation of New England-based nonfiction filmmakers at the Flaherty Film Seminar each year.

The Flaherty fellowship program runs concurrently alongside the Flaherty Seminar while offering additional programming – workshops, screenings, discussions, artist lunches, and artist talks – designed to provide more in-depth engagement with the Seminar program.

Morgan Hulquist is an emerging documentary filmmaker based in Portland, Maine whose work explores latent place-based stories. She is currently directing and producing INVADERS, a lyrical portrait of citizen scientists who spend their free time scouring Maine’s coastline for marine invasive species, now in production.

From 2022 to 2025, Morgan was Associate Producer at Multitude Films, the independent production company dedicated to transformative culture change through nonfiction storytelling, where she participated in the company’s Producer Apprenticeship program — dedicated to mentoring the next generation of documentary producers. Her credits include Life After(Sundance 2025/Independent Lens), Power (Sundance 2024/Netflix), Queer Futures (CPH: DOX 2023/Criterion Channel), How We Get Free (SFFILM 2023/Max) and Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (Tribeca 2022/Peacock), as well as Kristine Stolakis’s forthcoming animated documentary alive!, now in post-production. She worked in communications at Chicken & Egg Films, a nonprofit supporting women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers, 2017–2021 and is also a freelance archival producer and documentary communications specialist.

Originally from San Diego, Morgan is a member of the Maine Palestine Film Collective and an organizer of the Maine Palestine Film Festival.

Matteo Moretti is a Greek-Italian-American filmmaker and cinematographer specializing in documentary and narrative work that explores the intersection of culture, environment, and people. He’s drawn to stories that preserve living traditions, often capturing the quiet beauty and complexity of people and places worldwide.

Sasha Tycko is an anthropologist, photographer, and filmmaker and a PhD candidate at Emory University. Her current work focuses on the Atlanta forest at the center of the conflict over “Cop City,” where she integrates ethnographic research and a visual art practice to explore how the contested landscape—once the site of a city prison farm and antebellum plantation—motivates new articulations of history, nature, and ethics. Through this work, she has produced two films, Dwelling: A Measure of Life in the Atlanta Forest (2023, 40 min.) and Atlanta Forest Garden: Four Days of Work (co-produced with Marion Lary, 2023, 12 min.) and a photography exhibition, Ways of the Atlanta Forest (2025, Institute 193). Her writing and photographs have been published in n+1, Jewish Currents, Trans Studies Quarterly, Mergoat Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essay “Not One Tree” (co-authored with Grace Glass, 2023, n+1) was awarded the Krause Essay Prize. She received her BA at the University of Chicago.

The post Meet the 2025 LEF Flaherty Fellows appeared first on LEF Foundation.

LEF continues the New England Legacy Screenings series, highlighting early documentary film work being made in Boston in the 1970-80s. The third program in the series takes place this upcoming Wednesday, May 14th, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, showing seminal work made by women filmmakers.

The screening includes short works by Liane Brandon, Joyce Chopra, and Miriam Weinstein. They were in their 20s and 30s at the time of making their films, coming into their own at the height of the feminist movement. They believed that the “personal is political”, and that the challenges they faced as women were a result of larger forces at play within a patriarchal culture. For them, film seemed to be a way to validate and share this truth, particularly with other women, as the creation of a shared reality was at the heart and soul of the women’s movement.

Technological innovations were also happening during this time that led to “sync-sound”— shorthand for being able to capture picture and sound simultaneously— and led to portable rigs that allowed for a more intimate method to filmmaking. These advances resulted in a new and radical approach to documentary filmmaking.

As it happened, women filmmakers adopted these tools early on and used them to facilitate making personal essay films. In their early films, Chopra and Weinstein each unapologetically explored the conflict between becoming mothers and continuing to be filmmakers. Their films bravely explore the ambivalence they felt as new mothers— something their own mothers would not have felt free to voice—and the myriad adjustments they had to make; changes that impacted them more than the men in their respective lives. 

Brandon, in turn, was an influential figure in the emerging women’s movement of the 1960s, and she first came to film as an activist. Her two films from the early ’70s are precursors to the work made by Weinstein and Chopra, and are groundbreaking and radical films for the taboo issues they brought to light. Like Weinstein and Chopra, Brandon’s films stemmed from a passionate desire to illuminate the brave socio-political work that still needs to be done in order for women to not have to conform. 

Both Liane Brandon and Miriam Weinstein will be in-person. 

Lyda Kuth

Executive Director

LEF Foundation

Wednesday, May 14, 7pm, Coolidge Corner Theatre

Sometimes I Wonder Who I Am

dir. Liane Brandon 1970, 5min

Betty Tells Her Story

dir. Liane Brandon 1972, 20min

Call Me Mama

dir. Miriam Weinstein 1977, 14min

Clorae and Albie

dir. Joyce Chopra 1976, 36min

Joyce at 34

dir. Joyce Chopra 1972, 20min

Discussion to follow screenings: Two of the filmmakers, Liane Brandon and Miriam Weinstein, will be in-person. 

Liane Brandon is a filmmaker, photographer, and Professor Emeritus, UMass/Amherst. Brandon is considered an influential figure in the Women’s Movement of the 1970s. She is a co-founder of New Day Films, a filmmakers’ distribution cooperative. She has also been an advocate for media artists and won a 1977 landmark case securing copyright protection for filmmakers. The screening showcases two of her films, Sometimes I Wonder Who I Am, and Betty Tells Her Story, each groundbreaking in form and the taboo issues for women they bring to light.

Miriam Weinstein is a filmmaker,painter, and author of numerous books. Her work in film from the 1970s includes My Father the Doctor, Living With Peter, and We Get Married Twice. The screening showcases her 4th film, Call Me Mama, which follows her previous films chronologically and thematically. The film, which chronicles Weinstein having her first child, bravely explores the ambivalence she felt as a new mother and the adjustments she was required to make along the way.

Joyce Chopra is a producer and director of documentary and narrative film, as well as work for television. Her breakout fictional film, Smooth Talk, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for Best Dramatic Feature (1985). She is also an early member of New Day Films, a filmmakers’ distribution cooperative. The screening showcases Joyce at 34, her early autobiographical film, known for being the first portrayal of a live birth on television. The film was also radical for its unapologetic take on the conflict between becoming a mother and continuing to be a filmmaker. The other film, Chlorae and Albi, is a portrait of the friendship between two young black women in Boston who have known each other since childhood, and whose lives are taking different paths. 

New England Legacy Screenings Program Notes

New England has a rich history in documentary filmmaking that continues today. Beginning in the 1960s–’80s, filmmakers in the Boston area were pioneering technical innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to documentary that influenced the genre’s directions. Their early cinema vérité work set the trajectory of documentary filmmaking in the US and created landmark works posing questions of politics, gender, and social norms and rituals.

These screenings will highlight the variety of styles developed amidst this ever-evolving cinematic legacy, from the journalistic to first-person autobiographical storytelling. Each evening we will examine multiple artists whose stories created impact and whose artistic lens sparks dialogue to the present day.

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LEF continues the New England Legacy Screenings with a second program coming up this Wednesday, March 19, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

This screening will be comprised of two films, Primary by Robert Drew, and The Collective: Fifteen Years Later, by Richard Broadman. Drew’s groundbreaking 1960 film, Primary, introduced a whole new approach to journalism, which is the world Drew came from. He collaborated with others to develop innovative light-weight equipment that allowed for a more intimate, observational kind of filmmaking. It involved synchronized sound and image via a cassette tape recorder and camera (an over-simplified description that involved some physics!) that came to be known as “sync-sound”. This new equipment led to a blossoming of independent work originating in New England and to filmmakers here continuing to innovate the documentary form.

Richard Broadman is one of these makers, whose films sought to capture contemporary sociological issues locally that include Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston (1978) and Down the Project: The Crisis of Public Housing (1982). The Collective: Fifteen Years Later (1985), was a departure from his other films in that it looks back to an earlier time. The impetus for the film was Susi Walsh and the late Fred Simon, who launched Center for Independent Documentary in 1981. They approached Richard and his filmmaking colleague John Grady with a question about what had become of the political activism of the late 1960-70s. John Grady himself was an activist and reached out to those he knew, including a fellow activist, Michael Ansara, who appears in the film. A candid conversation between the participants captures parts of their experience back then and their current perspective on where things stood 15 years later in the mid-1980s.

Both John Grady and Michael Ansara will be joining us for a discussion, and no doubt have thoughts to share on where things stand today.

Stay tuned for more screenings to come.

Lyda Kuth

Executive Director

LEF Foundation

Wednesday, March 19, 7pm, Coolidge Corner Theatre

Primary (dir. Robert Drew, 1960, 53 min)

Robert Drew’s groundbreaking 1960 film Primary is one of the most important and influential documentaries in the history of the medium. A pioneering work in the documentary movement that came to be known as cinéma vérité, Primary follows the young charismatic senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, as he goes head-to-head with established Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey to win the Wisconsin presidential primary in April 1960.

The Collective (dir. Richard Broadman, 1985, 60 min)

In 1970, thousands of young people thought of themselves as agents of change. They wanted to restore America’s democratic vision; they wanted to end the war in Vietnam. This is the story of one collective—their successes and failures, and what they do and think fifteen years later. 

The Collective: Fifteen Years Later, released in 1985, is a portrayal of political activism, “reflecting on both the excitement and the disappointment of their political engagement, informants are, by turns, candid, rueful, and idealistic; they’re unsparing in acknowledging their own mistakes both in analyzing and in organizing against a structure of oppression centering on, but extending beyond, militarism and neocolonialism.” – Chris Wellin, “Documentary Film, Teaching, and the Accumulation of Sociological Insight: The Work of Richard Broadman”, Teaching Sociology (2013)

New England Legacy Screenings Program Notes

New England has a rich history in documentary filmmaking that continues today. Beginning in the 1960s–’80s, filmmakers in the Boston area were pioneering technical innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to documentary that influenced the genre’s directions. Their early cinema vérité work set the trajectory of documentary filmmaking in the US and created landmark works posing questions of politics, gender, and social norms and rituals.

These screenings will highlight the variety of styles developed amidst this ever-evolving cinematic legacy, from the journalistic to first-person autobiographical storytelling. Each evening we will examine multiple artists whose stories created impact and whose artistic lens sparks dialogue to the present day.

The post New England Legacy Screenings Continue March 19 – Program 2 appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Dear Filmmakers and Friends,

LEF is excited to announce a screening series that introduces audiences to New England’s unique history of documentary filmmaking. 

The spring 2025 screening series will include works by early documentary filmmakers whose names might be familiar to some, and others whose work is not as widely known. These were women and men in their mid-twenties. Many were graduate students at the former MIT Film Section, some were students and faculty at Harvard University, while others worked outside of traditional educational institutions.

In sharing these groundbreaking films, we aim to deepen our appreciation for this innovative body of work, whose legacy continues to inform today’s documentary filmmaking in countless ways. 

Each program will be comprised of 2 to 3 films, as most works are under an hour, connected loosely by a general theme. Two programs are scheduled for this March, with more to be announced for April and May. 

The series is inspired by Scott MacDonald’s 2013 book, The Cambridge Turn: American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary, which focuses on work generated at Harvard and the MIT Film Section and the cross-pollination that evolved between their faculty and students. Their filmmaking was aided in no small part by their own technological innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to the form. After reading MacDonald’s book, we imagined a series that would begin to “bring long overdue attention” to those who made seminal contributions to the documentary field.

Lyda Kuth

Executive Director

LEF Foundation

New England Legacy Screenings Program Notes

New England has a rich history in documentary filmmaking that continues today. Beginning in the 1960s–’80s, filmmakers in the Boston area were pioneering technical innovations that allowed for radical new approaches to documentary that influenced the genre’s directions. Their early cinema vérité work set the trajectory of documentary filmmaking in the US and created landmark works posing questions of politics, gender, and social norms and rituals.

These screenings will highlight the variety of styles developed amidst this ever-evolving cinematic legacy, from the journalistic to first-person autobiographical storytelling. Each evening we will examine multiple artists whose stories created impact and whose artistic lens sparks dialogue to the present day.

Wednesday, March 5, 7pm, Coolidge Corner Theatre

David Holzman’s Diary (dir. Jim McBride, 1967, 74 min)

David Holzman’s Diary is a signature film in the history of documentary filmmaking that isn’t a documentary. It’s a fictional narrative that satirizes the supposedly “unmediated reality” that cinema vérité, or observational cinema, was seen to be. David Holzman (played by actor L.M. Kit Carson) unloads comic-neurotic monologues to his 16mm camera, with humor and pathos, reminiscent of the “personally expressive cinema” emerging out of Boston at this time.

Riverdogs (dir. Robb Moss, 1978, 32 min)

A lyrical chronicle of a thirty-five day river trip along the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. His thesis film as a graduate student at the MIT Film Section, Moss’ inspired photography shapes what becomes a meditation on youth, nature, and an idyllic, fleeting moment in time.

Backyard (dir. Ross McElwee, 1984, 40 min)

Backyard was McElwee’s breakthrough autobiographical film and thesis work as a graduate student at the MIT Film Section. He portrays his southern roots through a portrayal of family members—his brother, an aspiring medical student; his father, a surgeon—as well as depicting the nuances of race and relationships.

The post Announcing New England Legacy Screenings – Program 1 appeared first on LEF Foundation.

New England-based directors and producers seeking production and post-production funds for feature-length (40+ min) nonfiction film and video projects are encouraged to apply for LEF’s next grant deadline on January 17, 2025.

The Moving Image Fund’s Production and Post-production grants have a two-part application process. Filmmakers interested in applying for project support must first submit a brief Letter of Inquiry (LOI). This year, the amount of information requested through the LOI form has been reduced.

From these initial inquiries, a smaller pool of applicants will be notified on Friday, March 7 about whether they are invited to submit a full application.

A maximum of eight (8) grants of $15,000 each will be awarded to projects in the Production phase, and a maximum of six (6) grants of $25,000 each will be awarded to projects in the Post-production phase during LEF’s major grants review. Please note that in order to be eligible for Post-production support, the project for which you are applying must have received previous LEF support.

• Production funds may be used for shooting picture and sound, early stage editing, equipment costs, materials, travel, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise)
• Post-production funds may be used for editing costs, rights, online, sound mix, color correction, transfers, distribution strategy, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise). To be awarded Post-production funding, the project must have already been supported by LEF at a previous stage (Early Development, Pre-production, or Production)

More information about this opportunity is available on the Guidelines and How to Apply pages of LEF’s website.

The Moving Image Fund’s eligibility criteria are:

• Projects must be long format with projected running times of 40 minutes or more.
• Primary creative personnel (director and/or producer) must reside in New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont).
• Projects must not be commissioned or work-for-hire, and the director/producer creative team must have creative control of the project.
• Projects with directors or producers enrolled in high school, undergraduate or master’s degree programs at the time of application are ineligible for consideration.
• Multi-channel or installation work will not be considered.
• For prior grantees, a final report on previous LEF grant funding is required.

Still not sure if you’re eligible? Take a look at our FAQ page.

Heads Up for Boston-area Nonfiction Filmmakers!

The Harvard Film Study Center-LEF Fellowship, an opportunity for one Boston-area filmmaker to receive a $15,000 grant and access to FSC’s pool of production and post-production equipment and community, will be accepting applications starting in early December.

You can stay up-to-date on this and more opportunities through LEF’s newsletter or by following LEF on Instagram.

The post LEF Now Accepting Moving Image Fund Letters of Inquiry for Production & Post-production Grants appeared first on LEF Foundation.

The LEF Foundation has awarded 11 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $47,500 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers.

The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in feature-length documentary films that demonstrate excellence in technique, a resonant story or idea, and originality of artistic vision and voice. The most recent round of awards includes eight grants of $5,000 to projects at the Pre-production stage and three grants of $2,500 to projects at the Early Development stage. 

The projects in this round reveal the scope and scale of belonging, from the intimate realms of family and identity to larger ones of community, culture, and the natural world. With focuses that shift across borders from New England to Appalachia and Puerto Rico, and further still to France, Venezuela, Colombia, Morocco, and Japan, the films navigate the unique ripple effects of inheritance and intervention alike. Whether their interest is in the fate of a generations-old restaurant, the fault lines in a family’s history, or the unexpected relationships that fuel our understanding of ourselves, the filmmakers receiving grants approach their material with sensitivity and deep curiosity.   

Pre-production

A Permanent Dream

Directed by Gabrielle Lubtchansky

Produced by Brooke Saias

Dar Marjana

Directed by Lamia Lazrak

Produced by Lisa Yadao, Irene Yadao + Manette Pottle

Illusions of Winter

Directed by Drew Swedberg

Produced by Josh Povec, Drew Swedberg, Bailey Beltramo

In the Keeping

Directed by Emily Drummer

Produced by Felipe Troya + Alex Denison

Kowloon!

Directed by Erin Ramirez + Mona Xia

Produced by Erin Ramirez, Mona Xia + Donovan Tolledo

Look at This Bird (Working Title) 

Directed by Elle Rose Rinaldi

Produced by Camara Aaron + Bella Racklin

Someone’s Father

Directed by Andrea Patiño Contreras

Produced by Andrea Patiño Contreras + Gabriela Díaz Arp

Tonada Menguante 

Directed and Produced by Luis Arnías

Early Development

Out in the Mountains (Working Title)

Directed and Produced by Amanda Kowalski

Paper Ties

Directed by Ezra Rose

Produced by Zoë Andrikidis

Rompió Fuente en la Noche (Water Breaks at Night)

Directed and Produced by Rosalyn Negrón

At LEF’s August deadline for Pre-production and Early Development, 52 eligible applications were received from filmmakers working throughout New England. Three peer readers from the local filmmaking community who represent a diversity of perspectives on documentary were invited to review, discuss, and make recommendations on the applications. These peer evaluations informed LEF staff’s final grant decisions. 

“With each Moving Image Fund round, we’re introduced to new filmmakers and to new and compelling projects in addition to filmmakers we have come to know over the years,” said Lyda Kuth, Executive Director. “It’s affirming and inspiring, both to staff and to the peer reviewers, to see the pool of New England filmmakers be continually renewed and expanded.”       

This is the fifth year that the Moving Image Fund has included support at the Early Development stage, giving initial seed funding to filmmakers who have not yet had a chance to shoot or edit sample footage for their current projects.

“LEF’s support comes at a critical time of research and development for our story,” one grantee shared. “At a time when financing independent films is so difficult, this grant will truly propel us forward.”

“Support during the early stages of documentary filmmaking is both rare and vital to bringing independent films to life,” another grantee shared. “I’m deeply grateful to LEF and the Moving Image Fund for championing independent documentary filmmakers in New England, where there is a strong, passionate and talented community of filmmakers with a deep love for non-fiction filmmaking.”

All applicants who applied for LEF funding for either Pre-production or Early Development will have the option to receive review notes from staff to learn how their proposals were evaluated by the peer reviewers and to ask any questions. 

“We were honored to work with a group of local peer reviewers who shared their insights and feedback on each of the 52 proposals that we received this round,” said LEF Program Director Gen Carmel. “We are committed to sharing that feedback in one-on-one calls with each team that would find it helpful to hear what the peer reviewers found most resonant, where they had any questions, and any ideas or resources to share. For us, these calls are also an opportunity to learn more about what LEF might be able to improve about its review process.” 

In addition to this group of grantees, LEF will also award $230,000 to 12 projects in Production and Post-production later in the fiscal year, following the next January 2025 application deadline. In total, LEF plans to distribute $277,500 in funding to documentary productions over the course of its 2025 fiscal year.

The next Moving Image Fund deadline will be Friday, January 17, 2025 for New England-based feature-length documentary directors and producers seeking to submit a Letter of Inquiry for Production or Post-production support.

Submissions will open in mid-November.

You can find more details regarding LEF Moving Image Fund guidelines and eligibility on our website.

The post LEF Foundation Announces $47,500 in Pre-production and Early Development Grants to New England Documentary Filmmakers appeared first on LEF Foundation.

LEF New England is now welcoming applications for Pre-production and Early Development grants through the Moving Image Fund.

A maximum of (6) Pre-production grants of $5,000 each and (6) Early Development grants of $2,500 each will be awarded for the use of research, travel, location scouting, script or storyboard development, experimentation with shooting picture and sound, distribution planning, fundraising, creating a trailer, schedule and budget development, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise).

Pre-production applications require a current work sample from the project you are proposing for funding. Early Development applications require two past work samples, and current work samples are not accepted.

Please review the Moving Image Fund guidelines and take a look at our frequently asked questions.

Deadline: Friday, August 16 at 11:59pm

Virtual Info Session

To learn more about the Moving Image Fund, join LEF staff for a virtual info session hosted via Zoom from 3:00–4:00pm ET on Monday, July 15.

This session will include live captioning (CART). Please let us know by Monday, July 8 at 9am if you’d like to request ASL interpretation (SVI) for this meeting.

The post LEF New England Now Accepting Moving Image Fund Applications for Pre-production and Early Development Through August 16 appeared first on LEF Foundation.