For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator
In 2023, Re-Present Media and Filmmakers Collaborative SF launched the For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator, a six month intensive to support a diverse cohort of seven local documentary filmmakers who are telling six personal stories from underrepresented communities in the Bay Area. From March-September 2023, the filmmakers participated in workshops, received mentoring, and used program stipends to strategically advance their films.
With each film comes an opportunity for community members to express their points of view and provide insight into how we can better understand each other and ourselves. The six selected projects highlight intersections of race, class, and gender from across the Bay Area.
Want to learn about future opportunities? Sign up for our general newsletter.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Comcast NBCUniversal Foundation, and the Hobson Lucas Family Foundation.
About the Program Team
Filmmakers Collaborative SF is a nonprofit media organization with a mission to catalyze positive change through the power of filmmaking.
Re-Present Media is an organization dedicated to advocating for personal storytelling from underrepresented communities in documentary film and nonfiction media.
Learn more about the For Us, By Us Team.
About the Films
Manilatown Manang
Director: Caroline Julia Cabading
When I-Hotel Tenant Activist Jeanette Lazam learns that a vacancy has opened up at the rebuilt International Hotel, she embarks on a road trip to claim back the home she was forcibly evicted from 44 years ago.
Bienvenida Abuelita
Director: Megan Martinez Goltz
Two generations after Celia assimilated to the United States, her queer grandchild Megan battles distance, language and religion to recover what remains of their Mexican heritage before Celia’s body and mind erode from terminal cancer.
Sammy's Final Arrangement
Director: Chad Santo Tomas
A young, successful florist reflects on the beauty of impermanence as he brings an end to a once-flourishing floral studio and retires from his career ahead of the birth of his second child.
We Just Want to Be
Directors: Mauro Sifuentes and Sé Sullivan
A trans survivor of experimental conversion therapy from the 1960s makes an unlikely friend in the present-day Bay Area, and the two go on a journey to explore their shared history of clinical experimentation, practices that continue to shape the lives of trans youth today.
Safe Harbor
Director: Erika Staud
A single mother has dreams of setting sail on her new home with her young daughter and cats but must first juggle her time and various jobs and stay afloat financially to provide for her family.
Saranam Gacchâmi (I take refuge)
Director: Priyanka Suryaneni
An enterprising Buddhist Monk defies all odds to set up one of the largest Tibetan Monasteries in the Bay Area to preserve the endangered Tibetan culture and traditions.