The Southern Documentary Fund

Programs: Artists services: the southern documentary fund is currently sponsoring 60 documentaries in progress. Our artists services program includes long standing core services but also many new benefits. These include: in-depth annual project consults, crowd-funding consulting and campaigns thru our partner platforms, rough cut reviews and public work in progress screenings, half hour pro-bono legal consults with entertainment attorneys, half hour pro-bono impact consults with outreach professionals, project pages on sdfs website (including donation button).

artists convening: in 2014, sdf organized a weekend event that has quickly become a cornerstone of our programming: our annual artists convening. We invited our 60+ sponsored artists to durham for community building and sharing best practices. The gathering included a filmmaker dinner, workshops, a keynote presentation (by an award winning filmmaker), practice pitch sessions, and plenty of networking opportunities. Our artists left armed with new knowledge, and inspired by industry leaders and their peers. Planning for the 2015 event is already underway, and will include increased opportunities for supporters and audiences to participate as well. Filmmaker grants: in 2014 we also established the sdf filmmaking grants, with generous support from the mary duke biddle foundation. These grants are open to documentaries being produced in or about north carolina. For the inaugural year we received an impressive 29 submissions, making grants to 4 worthy films on various topics (factory workers safety, african american history, family farming, and rural teens) and in various stages of production (development, production, and editing). In addition to providing critical funding to the films, these grants have garnered sdf more agency around the country with filmmakers, broadcasters, and funders, and fulfilled a long held dream of the organization to grant monies directly to southern documentaries.