"Our Message is Perseverance"

Brown Girls Doc Mafia and Others Are Working to Protect and Uplift Their Filmmakers in a Time of Crisis

Over the past week, I reported on the harmful effects of the Trump Administration’s white supremacist authoritarian policies on the independent film sector in two stories for IndieWire (“Trump Killed Voice of America. The Voice of Documentary Filmmakers and Public Media May Be Next” and “Trump’s DEI Attacks Are Creating Real-Time Destruction for Filmmakers of Color”). Alarmist headlines aside, these are scary times. And despite the thousands of words I’ve already written on the subject, there is more to report, both the bad and also the potentially good. It’s no surprise, as one documentary nonprofit executive told me, “People are upset, they’re scared, they’re angry, but they also don’t want to give in to Trump.”

After publication, I spoke with Brown Girls Doc Mafia (BGDM) founder and executive director Iyabo Boyd and co-executive director Nivedita Das for more on the subject. Despite all of the pushbacks and retrenchments regarding diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and accessibility across American culture and industries, Boyd and Das say most of their members have not yet felt any immediate impact beyond “existential dread.”

However, according to Boyd, the distribution of at least one documentary project has been affected by the federal government’s directives; and whether it’s the cultural or distribution climate, at least four executive producers are now taking a pause from funding.

But most of their members’ concerns are more about what’s coming next. “The job market was already bleak; the gig economy has been drying up; there is a looming recession; and there are concerns about paying the bills,” says Das, so the anti-DEI swing is just “the cherry on top of a sundae that no one wants to eat,” she adds.

If scarcity of funding—for creative projects, for groceries, for rent, for healthcare—are dominating the minds of independent filmmakers, it’s hard to see how they can counter the government’s current autocratic levers of power. (If you read conspiracy-monger Marjorie Taylor-Green’s latest wacky declaration in advance of her March 26 DOGE hearing “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” it’s hard to see how public media comes out alive.)

“I don’t know if we have the resources for a counter-attack,” admits Boyd. “Those working against DEI have been at this for a long time, so we are way behind in going toe to toe to with them, so most of our conversations have been about protecting ourselves and our organizations, protecting the filmmakers, and educating themselves about protecting themselves, and keeping up the momentum, the integrity, and the positive energy up.”

The irony of such a harrowing moment, adds Das, “is that it’s great time to produce amazing work because of the time we’re living in.”

This moment of crisis is also fostering a lot of conversations and the importance of convening, coordinating, coalitions, and building alliances. Regarding the threats to documentary filmmaking and public media, there are upcoming events happening at places like the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Doc10, DC/DOX, and other institutions that are preparing to seek some kind of solutions for the tough times ahead. Many in the field have sought some solace in their collective success fighting against the Miami mayor’s threat to shutdown a local art-house for showing “No Other Land.” And companies such as Confluential Films and ColorCreative, as I mentioned in the IndieWire story, and others nonprofits I spoke to separately, such as Kartemquin Films and Chicken & Egg, have strongly emphasized their commitment to fostering the works of diverse and disenfranchised creators in the face of Hollywood self-censorship. These are small victories relative to what’s coming, but the community has to hold on.

For Brown Girls Doc Mafia, the organization is celebrating its 10th anniversary later this year, and they’re not going anywhere. “Our message is perseverance,” says Boyd. “How do we circle our wagons as a community, how do you channel that energy into changing the political atmosphere? And how do we continue to invest in ourselves?”

“There’s comfort in knowing that you’re not alone,” adds Das.

BGDM is planning a fall tour, helping members get to film festivals, fostering networking, uplifting filmmakers with retrospectives, and even holding a dance party.

While Boyd is disappointed that the “film industry wasn’t more vocal about supporting communities of color, especially after all the work, time, and money we’ve put in to allegedly being in a better place,” she is calling on funders to understand the importance of the infrastructure that has been put in place over the last decade, and buttressing those structures. “Funders have to wake up to the infrastructure piece,” she says. “A lot of our orgs are in our infancy—10 years is in our infancy—and we know of lots organizations that are just coming up, and this Administration is going to hinder opportunities for those other organizations to grow.”

On the slightly brighter side, the crashing of our economy and our institutions will inevitably lead to new ways of doing things. I hope it doesn’t come to this, but Karin Chien, cofounder of Distribution Advocates and head of distributor dGenerate Films, which distributes Chinese films, told me the Beijing Queer Film Festival awhile back resorted to showing films on buses with TVs set up for Karaoke as a way to screen their films. “But they can’t do that anymore,” she adds.

Carlos Gutierrez, founder and exec director of nonprofit Cinema Tropical and a member of Distribution Advocates, who I quoted in the IndieWire article, was clear that the systems that have long been in place have failed underrepresented communities.

“Now is a good opportunity to bring back the audience and the filmmakers back to the center and create ecosystems around that,” he said. Inspired by the radical Third Cinema of the ’60s and ‘70s, he continued, “We need to democratize film exhibition, and I think the context is really ripe for doing something drastic.”

“Fear is not going to help us,” added Gutierrez. “When people start complying in advance, that’s one of the biggest problems right now, because it helps the other side. I do think we need to be optimistic,” he continued, “because optimism is a political tool.”