Mountainfilm Announces New Subject Matter Award
Mountainfilm is honored to engage a new partnership with nonprofit Subject Matter to provide funds and resources to documentary films that highlight urgent social issues and to nonprofits tackling the featured topics, while creating roadmaps for inspired audiences to take action.
Subject Matter collaborates with film festivals to identify feature-length documentaries focused on urgent and timely social issues currently impacting the United States. Subject Matter and Mountainfilm are greatly aligned in their missions and a partnership is a natural fit. This partnership helps Mountainfilm further our goals to support filmmakers and we are very excited to collaborate on this program for the 2024 festival.
One feature-length film from the 2024 Mountainfilm Festival documentary program will be selected to receive a $15,000 grant, which will support the project’s outreach and impact efforts so more audiences can engage with the film and learn about the issue.
Subject Matter then identifies nonprofits working on the issues featured in the film, vets them, and consults with the filmmaking teams to select a corresponding grantee who is doing work that addresses the issues to also receive $15,000. At the film's festival screenings, Subject Matter invites audiences to join them in donating to the nonprofit grantee in order to create a positive community action in response to the film.
Subject Matter is led by Co-Executive Directors Colleen Hammond and David Earls, along with Board Co-Chairs Jeffrey Wright and Lily Band, and board members Sal Al-Rashid, Christie Marchese, Samantha Rudin Earls, Loren Hammonds, and Ferne Pearlstein.
Since Subject Matter launched in 2022, they have awarded $310,000 in grants to eight social issue documentaries (Aftershock, Lakota Nation vs. United States, Refuge, A Woman on the Outside, Breaking the News, Every Body, 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime, Daughters) and eight impactful nonprofits (saveArose Foundation, Lakota People’s Law Project, Parents for Peace, Essie Justice Group, The 19th, interAct, Our Three Winners, and Girls For A Change).
In order to be considered for the Subject Matter Award please submit your project by January 19th, 2024 at www.mountainfilm.org/submit-a-film/.
More info at subjectmatter.org.