Brown Girls Doc Mafia

Brown Girls Doc Mafia is an initiative advocating for over 4,500 women and non-binary people of color working in the documentary film industry around the world. We fight inequality by building community and sharing resources, nourishing our creative brilliance, demanding access and visibility in creative and professional environments, enriching our community with the knowledge to sustain ourselves financially, and by cutting through oppressive industry structures to advocate for our members.

NALIP

NALIP seeks to change media culture by advocating and promoting the professional needs of Latinx artists in media. Standing at the forefront of that systemic change, our organization works with industry leaders towards seeing a more inclusive future both on and off screen. While the world has seen some improvement since our founding there is still much work to be done. The Latinx Community continues to be grossly underrepresented within the entertainment industry - and we are here to help ensure we continue to move forward in the right direction.

Founded in 1999, a group of producers, content creators, academics, and media advocates tired of their fight to be heard came together in search of building community. Since then, NALIP has strived to work towards discovering, incubating, promoting, and inspiring Latinx Content creators with our multifaceted programs.

Black in Film

We are a free and public self-submission Black filmmaker database and job submission hub. Our members range from a kid straight out of school looking to start his career, to Emmy-Award winning Hair Stylists, and DPs. Black in Film is an open-collaboration platform designed to get more Black People hired in the film and television industry. We are funded by donations and staffed by volunteers.

ADOC (Asian American Documentary Network)

A-Doc is committed to sharing ideas and resources, providing mutual support and mentorship, and advocating for equity and diversity in the production and distribution of non-fiction storytelling.

Film in Colour

Film in Colour is an online tool intended for users to discover, hire, and collaborate with Film/TV industry professionals of colour, including Directors, Writers, Producers, Editors, Crew, Executives, Curators, Comedians, and a wide array of other roles for all levels of experience.

Latinx Directors

Our mission is to connect Hollywood with Latinx Directors in the simplest way possible with our detailed and searchable website. #NoMoreExcuses

Hue You Know

HUE works to build community, provide mentorship, and foster employment opportunities for BIPOC professionals in media to bolster diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging.

Black TV & Film Collective

The Black TV & Film Collective is a 501c3 development and production hub with a simple mission: to create opportunities for Black and African Descent artists to achieve financially sustainable careers within television and film. We provide critical production support enabling members to build a strong body of work, supplemented by workshops and labs focused on craft development. There is power in numbers and together there is unlimited potential in what we can achieve.

Black Film Space

Our mission is to provide skill-enhancing opportunities, community building experiences and knowledge on navigating the film industry for people of African descent.

Arab-American Screenwriters

Arab-American Screenwriters make up less than 0.3 % of TV writers’ rooms while misrepresented Arab characters fill our screens. Let’s change that. This is a database of Arab-American screenwriters.

Take your pick Hollywood.

Black Sound Society

The Black Sound Society (BSS) is a group of professionals working across all grades in production and post-production film and television sound. We strive to promote and safeguard the interests of our members, keep them abreast of production methods and explore new technologies.

The BSS provides a network for advice to support those already established in the industry as well as offering help and guidance to the next generation of black sound technicians.

Diversity in Media

The Diversity In Media Crew List is a public Google doc for diverse crew and people who want to hire them. I have set up this list because I want to ensure that producers are able to hire from a broad spectrum of society. There are tabs for each department, 26 in all – so please scroll across the bottom. The top row for each department is frozen, so scroll up and down to see the list. It's easy to find people by using the sort function. If you need help with this, email us: info@bridgeandtunnelproductions.com

BIPOC Doc Editors

The current lack of inclusion and access in documentary production is a systemic problem. The documentary community is currently mostly White, and this has led to an overwhelming system of White creatives mentoring and promoting other White creatives already in their circles. Like all areas of production, this is very true in documentary edit rooms. Without a fundamental and intentional effort to provide tangible long-term support to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) talent, these systemic issues will remain. It will take all of us to make lasting change.

Bid Black

#BidBlack is a non-profit platform on a mission to normalize the presence of Black filmmakers in creative roles in the advertising industry. We aim to be a complementary resource for all creative industries to source Black talent– placing an emphasis on creating more opportunities for Black creators to bid on commercial jobs by increasing awareness and access to Black directors, cinematographers, editors, colorists, and more.

Our organization’s name is a direct call to action for marketers to transform their approach to bidding and awarding commercial jobs. Gate keepers are hesitant to work with talent who don’t have “the right experience” or who they’re not familiar with; thus, many creatives face a catch-22 of having less opportunity to work and not enough work on their reel to be considered for a job. This cycle creates a network of “go-to,” predominantly white-male creators who routinely get hired, while untapped talent remains pigeonholed. Image of Sydni Chustz, founder of Bid Black

Started in 2018 by Sydni Chustz as a response to the “otherness” she felt after starting her first job in production, Bid Black began as a passion project to increase the awareness and cultural relevancy of Black expression inside her company. It has evolved into an industry wide tool to normalize Black voices in storytelling. Excuses like “there’s not enough” or “I don’t know where to find them” won’t cut it anymore. Here we are.

Programmers of Color Collective

Comprising programmers who are POCs, women and TSLGBTQ+*, the objective of the recently formed POC2 (Programmers of Colour Collective) is to advocate for a more inclusive programming pool worldwide. Festival programmers are curators of culture, tastemakers and ultimately decision-makers whose choices define whose voices will be heard and whose narratives will be seen. Like film critics, they form an integral part of the filmic eco-system whose choices, in the eyes of the film industry and the general public, also define the value given to the films they select at film festivals. Programmers are above all individuals who carry their own set of vantage points, privileges, perspectives and biases.

Film festivals and international film festivals in particular strive to present selections that bear witness to the world’s multiplicity, bringing a diversity of perspectives from near and far to the silver screen. Yet, if the pool of programmers is predominantly homogenous, male-dominated and primarily middle-class, then how does that affect the gaze that such pools collectively cast on the world through their selections? Can such festival programmer pools see the world other than through the dominant lens? What legitimacy do such pools of festival programmers have to select films from a diverse world that isn’t reflected among their ranks? As much as reframing one’s perspective to include others is part of a programmer’s work, programming pools that don’t reflect and include their local and global diversity cannot legitimately claim to be purveyors of the best that the world has to offer if that world isn’t reflected in their staff.

Spurred by the many cases of (unconscious) bias in film festival selections that are gender-imbalanced, lack representation of people of colour or else portray them or other underrepresented groups in a way that is inauthentic or culturally appropriative, this group of festival and industry programmers decided to take a magnifying glass to the international programming pool. The collective’s primary aim is not only to stimulate a conversation around the lack of programmers who are people of colour at international film festivals, but also to be a catalyst for transformative change towards a more inclusive international programming pool. As a collective, we feel it is important to advocate for greater inclusion of POC festival staff, including at senior levels, but to also explore how that inclusivity can affect decision-making as well as the way films are curated, submissions practices and outreach to diverse talent.

As a collective, we also aim at increasing our visibility as programmers who are POCs in the more general context that is by and large white, cis-gendered, male and middle-class. Despite the primary focus being on POCs, the collective’s approach is intersectional in its recognition that questions of ethnicity within the international programming pool are inextricably linked to those of gender, sexual orientation, religion, caste, colorism, socio-economic background, disability, etc. As we want to bring more POCs into the profession and act as ambassadors for those entering into it, POC2 also seeks to swell its ranks in an effort to bring the needle forward on our inclusion internationally. Ultimately, our primary objective is to make festival programs themselves more robust, reflective of international audiences and richer through our inclusion. In the same vein, POC2 is dedicated to encouraging independent programing in response to corporate and top-down selection processes.

Composers Diversity Collective

An organization of music creators who are achieving a workplace environment in the entertainment industry as diverse as our society.

Our Mission
1) To increase our visibility to industry producers and creatives via networking opportunities and performances.
2) To offer education and mentorship to emerging composers in underserved communities.
3) To service the community through music.

Our Vision
We exist to eliminate the industry’s challenge to find culturally diverse music creators, music supervisors, sound engineers and musicians, to increase our own awareness of each other, and to dispel misconceptions about the stylistic range of any minority composer.

Editors of Color

Lack of representation is a circular, self-replicating problem. Employers tend to recruit talent through the same networks, channels, and connections. Even the best-intentioned employers may be heard to say, “I’d love to hire a person of color for this job, if only I knew any people of color in my field.”

That’s where Editors of Color comes in. A project of Conscious Style Guide, Editors of Color is a comprehensive resource to address the representational bias in publishing, communications, and the media. Our goal is to connect talented editors, proofreaders, and sensitivity readers with employers and recruiters seeking to diversify their teams and broaden their perspectives.

Achieving a truly equitable and representative staff won’t happen just by being open to it. It requires a deliberate, conscious effort: to venture outside the usual hiring haunts, and to seek out the undiscovered talent.

Editors of Color is the place to start.

Black in Post

It’s time to diversify post production.

Our post community has historically avoided giving Black artists the opportunity to sit at the table, consequently keeping our post teams comfortably and traditionally white and male.

Qualified Black creatives who have attempted to break into our community have often been met with little to no access. Those who do manage to break through the white wall find themselves in environments where their professional abilities are constantly monitored and doubted. Many Black creatives have their careers stunted due to the lack of opportunity to advance.

We can do better.

It is our mission at Black in Post to bring this exclusionary culture to an end.

We are committed to creating pipelines of success between Black post professionals and their career goals. We are a team of Allies and Black post creatives who are working together to create opportunities, educate post departments and build relationships.

Black Documentary Collective

The Black Documentary Collective (BDC) was founded by the late, great documentarian St. Clair Bourne to support the artistic development and professional advancement of documentary media makers of African descent.

The BDC supports its members through promotional efforts, fundraising and crowdfunding support, access to free and discounted educational, artistic, and professional development workshops, professional services, and networking events with our many partners, as well as screenings and referrals for jobs, distribution, and other opportunities.

The BDC is also dedicated to making a difference in the ever-increasing communities that are reflected in and resonate with the varied work of our filmmakers, through community partnerships, impact and engagement. We have helped countless members raise funds, promote and screen their films, connect with organizational and local partners, and secure distribution, work-for-hire, consulting, teaching, and more. Please visit the online BDC catalog and directory to connect with our talented members.