Update June 5, 2025 : The RESISTANCE & JOY SCREENING TOUR

Update May 9, 2024: SIFTerEboni Zamani pearlsgirlproductions puts spotlight on independent film distribution, part of her work as SIFT’s Representative in the Color Congress – an ecosystem-builder that is committed to organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States.

COLOR CONGRESS is a coalition of POC documentary organizations that consists of filmmaker collectives, film festivals, youth creative educational organizations and more. It continues to be an evolving and accessible space for POC film and media nationwide. Last year the member organizations of Color Congress were broken up into committees to work through and push forward ideas for the most pressing issues facing member organizations. The committees ranged from a retreat space to distribution. We met and worked for months on these issues and the viability of the ideas to resolve them. These ideas all had the potential to be resourced over the next couple of years via the Color Congress Field Building Fund. In January, we voted on which one of the Field Building Fund ideas would be our coalition’s focus for the next two years. And in one of the most democratic processes I’ve ever been a part of, our distribution/marketing experiment was chosen. I was elated and so were my fellow SIFTers.

Since SIFT (Sisters in Film & Television) began in 2019, distribution has been one of our collective’s most pressing challenges. In our region, media arts wasn’t well funded for a very long time. In many ways, distribution in particular is not well supported. The typical grant that indie filmmakers had access to ranged from $1000 to $4000. It was not until the founders of SIFT — including Tatiana Bacchus, Yolanda Johnson-Young and Nadine Patterson — started to actively talk to funders and regional film office advocates for funding — that the support started to increase. Independence Public Media Foundation (IPMF) was the first local foundation to fund filmmakers in the $10K to $75K range.

I spent time during my tenure as a member of Councilmember Isaiah Thomas’ Arts and Culture Taskforce trying to make sense of why media arts was underfunded and/or unsupported in our region. I discovered that this was due in part to the belief that indie filmmaking could be commercially supported (and therefore did not need funding) in a way that painting or dance or sculpting could not be. I was surprised to learn this but … READ FULL ARTICLE on Medium

Update September 13, 2023

SIFTer Eboni Zamani represented SIFTMedia 215 at THE COLOR CONGRESS NATIONAL CONVENING – a biannual event for member organizations. At the inaugural National Convening in August 2023, 78 leaders of documentary organizations based in the United States and US islands gathered in Atlanta and online for three days with the aim of building trust, a shared vision for a reimagined documentary landscape, and a plan for our collective work forward.

Originally Posted January 14, 2023 

SIFTMedia 215 Joins COLOR CONGRESS

Color Congress is an ecosystem-builder that is committed to organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands. We do this by supporting, resourcing, connecting and championing these organizations to build their collective power.

To build organizational and collective capacity, and strengthen transformational collaboration between people of color organizations. In Summer 2022, Color Congress member organizations began the process of directing the use of a $525K fund to strengthen infrastructure, support organizational sustainability, and foster collaborative, field-led work. To learn about the outcomes of this work, visit our MEDIUM post about it.

COLOR CONGRESS MEMBERSHIP ENROLLMENT IS ONGOING – Membership Eligibility

SIFTers are looking forward to the continued association with Color Congress!