New Fellowship Offers Custom-Tailored Mentorship, Community, and Cash Grant from Sundance Institute and Adobe 11 Women Artists, Creating Bold New Work Across Diverse Disciplines, Selected For
Year of Comprehensive Support
Los Angeles, CA - Sundance Institute announced today the 11 artists selected for its first-ever Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellowship, designed to meaningfully support women artists creating bold new work in film and media, with a priority on filmmakers from historically underrepresented communities. The fellowship includes a $5,000 cash grant, skill-building workshops, and year-round mentorship from Sundance Institute staff and Adobe executives. Fellows were selected by Adobe from Sundance Institute's community of supported artists across program disciplines.
The new fellowship for women connects to the Institute and Adobe's shared long-standing commitment to nurturing, developing, and championing underrepresented voices. Adobe is also the founding supporter of Sundance Ignite, a year-long artist development program supporting filmmakers ages 18-25.
Beginning this summer, fellows will participate in an intimate online gathering to meet their cohort community, providing a forum to speak candidly about challenges and goals, brainstorm ideas for skill-building workshops, and learn how to maximize their fellowship experience. In the coming months, fellows will be able to participate in two skill-building workshops, based on the groups' needs and interests.
Throughout their entire fellowship year, each artist will receive custom-tailored support from Sundance Institute program staff and Adobe, including introductions to key industry contacts and creative advisors, quarterly group calls to share progress and learnings, and referrals to specific opportunities. Each fellow is participating in a Sundance Institute Lab or program aligning with their career path.
We are so grateful to Adobe's support in championing and meaningfully supporting these eleven extraordinary artists through this new fellowship, said Keri Putnam, Executive Director, Sundance Institute. In these turbulent times, visionary and targeted generosity is crucial for artists responding to this moment in our culture and evolving their craft.
Creativity has the power to unite us, help us cope, inspire us and drive positive change in the world. But, creativity needs to be more accessible to, and celebrated by, every one of us-regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. At Adobe, we believe it is our responsibility to give diverse voices a platform to share their stories, especially in this unprecedented moment, and we are proud to partner with Sundance Institute to create greater opportunity for female filmmakers, said Ann Lewnes, EVP and CMO, Adobe.
Women at Sundance is made possible by leadership support from The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, CBS Corporation, The Harnisch Foundation, Refinery29, and Adobe. Additional support is provided by Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Kimberly Steward, Paul and Katy Drake Bettner, Barbara Bridges, Abigail Disney and Pierre Hauser-Like a River Fund, Rhianon Jones, Suzanne Lerner, Cristina Ljungberg, Susan Bay Nimoy, Nancy Stephens, Jenifer and Jeffrey Westphal, Ann Lovell, Chase Sapphire, IMDbPro, MAJORITY, Zions Bank, The Female Quotient, Visionary Women, Gruber Family Foundation, Pat Mitchell and Scott Seydel, The Jacquelyn & Gregory Zehner Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
The 2020 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellows are:
Jameka Autry is a producer, director, and 2019 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. In 2017 she was honored as an Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow and in 2018 she was selected as part of the inaugural DOC NYC 40 Under 40 List. She was recently awarded the Sundance/A&E Brave Storyteller Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and currently holds a Post Graduate Fellowship at the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Most recently she completed work on Through The Night, which premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. Other producing works include Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops, which won the jury grand prize at SXSW and Boston International Film Festival, and premiered on HBO in Fall 2019. Jameka has also produced Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing (HBO), In My Father's House (Showtime), MATANGI/ MAYA/M.I.A. (Sundance 2018) and served as a Consulting Producer on We The Animals and Love Gilda.
Milisuthando Bongela is an award winning writer, blogger and editor whose work pivots around the subject of the post-apartheid condition from the perspective of black middle class South Africans and women. She has written extensively about the intersections of race, class and gender in South Africa for newspapers like the Mail and Guardian and City Press Dazed and Confused, Aperture Magazine, Elle and Colours as well as having worked across the arts in the fields of fashion, music, art, publishing and cultural activism. For three years she edited the Arts and Culture section of the weekly Mail & Guardian and is the co-creator of Umoya: On African Spirituality, a podcast that seeks to demystify African Spirituality. She is currently exploring the post-apartheid condition in South African society, focusing on the psychological effects of racism through her first film, a Sundance Institute and Chicken & Egg supported feature documentary currently titled Milisuthando. Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grantee.
Ericka Blount Danois has worked as a music and culture writer, screenwriter, author, researcher, and producer. Her award-winning works include: Love, Peace and Soul, a history of the show Soul Train and documentaries; Time is Illmatic, Tupac (Untitled) and PBS's Finding Your Roots. Ericka's interview portfolio includes conversations with Fidel
