Like every meaningful relationship,
documentary making is deeply transformative.
OUR FILM FELLOWSHIPS - IDEA AND ESSENCE
EMPHASIS
Our Film Fellowships aim to address significant feminist, artistic and public discourse priorities that mandate a greater number and diversity of voices and interpretations, inspired by lived realities, to initiate, expand, intensify or deepen. Invested in ideas, processes and impact, we aspire to supporting passionate and evocative films informed by authenticity, those that make other worlds seem possible and those that few others might support.
PROCESS
The Fellowships are commissioned in response to open calls for proposals. While being a small drop in the ocean,
we attempt to enable opportunities for articulation, strengthening assertions by women, non-conforming individuals, muslim, dalit, adivasi, trans and queer persons, those dis-abled by society and erased by the state, in enlarging the potential of filmmaking, rejecting their historical appropriation.
We hope to support first-time artists and those with experience, individuals and groups, those speaking from deeply personal spaces and long-held political commitments, voices that acknowledge privilege and those that question erasure from public cultures, those rooted in the present moment and those that have grown with movements, together representing several intersectional possibilities.
We strongly believe that the most significant form of authorship is autobiographical, radically reframing film form, content and its affect. It is a priority to seek out voices that best speak for themselves.
Creative imagination and expression have historically been mediated by unjust hierarchies, especially of caste, patriarchy, heteronormativity, class, religion, majoritarianism and ableism.
EXPRESSION
Languages are about identity, culture, history, about how we think, dream, belong, create, share and hold on to memories.
The languages of cinematic expression - visual, aural and verbal, are significant to our work. We encourage films in languages that most intricately capture the specificities and depths of their subjects, allowing filmmakers to think and craft in their grammar.
DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION
The commissioned filmmakers have creative autonomy over their films, developed in dialogue with the Rough Edges team, whose support we hope enriches and nuances their pursuits. The exchange we attempt to build, allows for mutual sharing and learning, producing attentively, with intention, joy, courage and vulnerability.
We expressly hold that outcomes do not alone represent the accomplishments, empowerment and catharsis of documentary journeys. It is therefore imperative to share in the intention, vision and process of the artist and support honest, committed, spirited efforts that do not always yield identifiable success.
Constructing meaning is at the very core of the artist’s intention and how they wish to make us feel - every frame, moment, word, subtext, piece of sound and drop of silence.
