Pitch Day (Nov. 14)
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Moderated by Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free), Pitch Day presents an opportunity for 12 filmmaking teams with promising works-in-progress to pitch to industry figures from the fields of distribution, financing, production, and more for feedback. The selected work-in-progress projects are included in the schedule below.
In the Festival Lounge, the day starts with Breakfast (9-10AM) hosted by community partner Brown Girl Doc Mafia (BGDM) and ends with a Happy Hour (4:30-5:30PM).
Co-presented by: AJH Films
Live Pitch – Part 1
Moderator: Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free)
Industry Panelists: Alex Holder (AJH Films), Robert Chang (American Documentary/POV), Trevite Willis (Best Yet Entertainment), Poh Si Teng (Independent Producer), and Brad Abramson (A&EIndieFilms).
Boom!, Director: Laura Placarte, Producers: Johnny Brewin, Mandy Chang. Champion fighter G-Air and driven Sonia are a boxing couple navigating the complexities of life.
EJ Lee: All American, Director: Jason Rhee, Producers: Zoe Sua Cho, Jason Rhee. EJ Lee, a Louisiana legend nicknamed the “Korean Magic Johnson of NCAA women’s basketball,” has been overlooked her entire career and finally, at the age of 60, EJ becomes a college head coach to lead an underdog team of young women in West Texas.
Kikuyu Land, Director: Andrew H. Brown, Bea Wangondu, Producers: Andrew H. Brown, Bea Wangondu, Joseph Njenga, Mike Morrisroe. In Kenya’s highlands, a Nairobi journalist returns to her ancestral home to cover a civil case against the British Crown and the largest British-owned corporation in Kenya.
Live Pitch – Part 2
Moderator: Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free)
Industry Panelists: Alex Holder (AJH Films), Robert Chang (American Documentary/POV),Trevite Willis (Best Yet Entertainment), Poh Si Teng (Independent Producer), and Brad Abramson (A&E IndieFilms).
Landscapes of Memory, Director: Leah Galant, Producer: Elijah Stevens. Weaving personal essay and intimate character studies, Landscapes of Memory explores Germany’s remembrance culture, and the uses and abuses of collective memory.
No Discount, Director: Shiraz Ahmed, Producer: Shiraz Ahmed. Detroit’s fight the odds to stay alive in a city marred by violence and crumbling health infrastructure. When a pandemic hits, a pastor, patient, and physician force us to consider what is truly needed to make this community whole.
The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs, Director: Èlia Gasull Balada, Producers: Matteo Norzi, Maria Altamirano, Lucas Engel, Marc Clotet. Sara Flores, an Indigenous artist from the Peruvian Amazon, bursts into the contemporary art scene in her seventies. Despite a lifetime of hardship, she rejects the materialistic impulse for accumulation, channeling her newfound success to empower the resistance of the Shipibo Nation.
Live Pitch – Part 3
Moderator: Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free)
Industry Panelists: Alex Holder (AJH Films), Nell Augustin (NBCUniversal Original Voices Documentary Films), Megan Gelstein (Catapult Film Fund), Monika Navarro (Firelight Media), and Denise Greene (Black Public Media.)
The Hijacker, Director: Marco Williams, Producer: Danielle Beverly. The story of the 1971 hijacking of a Canadian airliner to Cuba, by a Black American Militant, and his capture thirty years later in New York three days before 9/11.
The United States of Urvashi, Director: Nancy Kates, Producer: Deepa Donde. An intimate portrait of the late activist and author Urvashi Vaid, examining her 40-year career as a queer agitator and thinker.
This is Not an Apple, Director: Nefise Özkal Lorentzen, Producer: Ola Hunnes. We meet three Palestinian siblings from a suburb in Oslo working for an apple farm.
Live Pitch – Part 4
Moderator: Sian-Pierre Regis (Duty Free)
Industry Panelists: Alex Holder (AJH Films), Nell Augustin (NBCUniversal Original Voices Documentary Films), Megan Gelstein (Catapult Film Fund), Monika Navarro (Firelight Media), and Denise Greene (Black Public Media.)
To Die for a Soul, Director and Producer: David Enrique Estrada. To Die for a Soul follows the lives of three Honduran men as they fight to survive a hurricane: a young man looking to migrate out of Honduras, a 94-year-old man who has saved hundreds from drowning in past storms, and a filmmaker facing his own thoughts on migration as a possible future for himself and his family.
Until the Buzzing Stops, Director: Abd al Kader Habak, Producer: Janay Boulos. Ali, a Syrian refugee in London who’s a beekeeper, dreams of building a bee farm to train and employ fellow refugees while saving the British native black honeybees from extinction.
Untitled Solidarity Project, Director: Yael Bridge, Producers: Yoni Golijov and Jeremy Flood. A mosaic portrait of the Teamster labor union’s massive campaign to organize 350,000 UPS workers across the United States in a collective fight for dignity and safety on the job.
DOC NYC PRO is co-presented by: