Grantees

As Outfest prepares to launch its 41st edition on July 13, over two hundred filmmakers anxiously await to see how the Los Angeles crowds will respond to the dramas, comedies, shorts and documentaries programmed for the film festival that will be covering all aspects of the LGBTQ+ community. With a mission statement that proclaims an agenda to “give artists, filmmakers and entertainment professionals the opportunity to discover their voice, provide the pathways to the visibility of their work by all members of the public, and assure that their legacy will live on for generations to come,” Outfest is excited about its latest edition.

Angela Lee is the Director of Artist Development at Film Independent, a non-profit that aims to foster inclusion and innovation in the world of visual storytelling. Lee not only is a successful producer in her own right, but she also leads some of the most forward and relevant fiction and non-fiction storytelling labs and programs in the USA.

“Diversity can mean more than one thing. Diversity can be an injury, diversity can be the color of your skin, diversity can mean standing up for yourself,” actress and activist Sharon Stone said at The Hollywood Reporter’s second annual “Raising Our Voices: Setting Hollywood’s Inclusion Agenda” luncheon gala which was held in partnership with the Golden Globes, East West Bank and the Wallis Annenberg GenSpace, the event’s venue.

More than ten years ago, UCLA’s Entertainment and Media Research Initiative (EMRI) began producing the Hollywood Diversity Report, at first annually then biannually, covering both the film and television sectors. The report – partially funded by Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) – is unique in that it aims at providing comprehensive data analyses that relate to racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of diversity in the entertainment industry and audiences.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) began supporting journalism and freedom of the press in 2021. Since then, more than 20 journalistic organizations and institutions have been added to the pool of more than 90 grantees.

FilmAid’s Director Gita Saedi Kiely embodies the organization’s mission to give a public voice to vulnerable communities around the world through the power of film, and to “democratize who gets to tell their story”. She grew up in Chicago in a small Persian-American community with parents from Teheran who met in the USA as university students in the 1960s.

It was 1945 and as the war in Europe wound down, Stuart and Budd Schulberg, two young US officers, rushed around Germany in a race against time. The two brothers – Budd, 31, a navy lieutenant and Stuart, a 23-year-old marine corps officer – had been dispatched by the OSS on a special film-finding mission.

On October 15, 2022, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) grantee community met at the offices of Film Independent, in midtown Los Angeles. Representatives from more than 60 organizations got together with HFPA members, including President Helen Hoehne, and Grants Officer Sandra Cuneo.

Voodoo Macbeth marks the first theatrical release from USC Originals in association with Warner Bros and was overseen by veteran producer and USC professor, John Watson (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Backdraft and The Outer Limits). The film was made almost entirely by past and present students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts – a long-time HFPA grant recipient – and is based on the true story behind the 1936 all-black Shakespeare production of Voodoo Macbeth.

After a long absence due to the pandemic, California State University, Northridge (CSUN) senior undergraduate students of class 2020 were finally able to share their works on Wednesday night, September 14, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater. By the time the young and diverse crowd had settled into their seats, at least half an hour after the scheduled start time, the large venue was nearly full, overflowing with eager anticipation.