EXCLUSIVE: The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation has announced the recipients of its generous inaugural Documentary Film Award: Untitled “Ear Hustle” Film and Indígena.

Each film earns an unrestricted $50,000 grant “in recognition of its artistic excellence,” and filmmakers will attend a creative retreat hosted by Points North Institute during the Camden International Film Festival, which begins Thursday in mid-coast Maine.

Untitled “Ear Hustle” Film, directed by Erika Cohn with editor Kristina Motwani, follows the creators of the Ear Hustle podcast — Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods, and Antwan Williams – as they travel to prisons around the world, “sharing stories born on the inside.”

In Indígena, written and directed by Siku Allooloo with editors Avrïl Jacobson and Lawrence Jackman, “a filmmaker retraces her mother’s legacy as an activist and journalist during the Red Power Movement, bringing to light 500 years of Taino resistance and igniting her own journey of reclamation.” Read more on each film below.

The inaugural Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Documentary Film Award was adjudicated by a jury of four documentary practitioners: Chloe Walters-Wallace, director of Regional Initiatives, Firelight Media; Jeff Seelbach, producer; Nell Lawrenz-Wareham, deputy director, Explore Minnesota Film; and Ian Kibbe, senior producer, Kartemquin Films.

“The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation made a commitment this inaugural year to fund an art form that is research-driven truth-telling,” noted Donna McNeil, executive director of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. “We were moved by the applications and proud of these brave filmmakers.”

The Camden International Film Festival runs Thursday to Sunday (Sept. 17-20) in the seaside towns of Camden and Rockland, Maine. The director and editor of Untitled “Ear Hustle” Film and of Indígena will attend the creative retreat hosted by Points North Institute (PNI) coinciding with the festival. “The retreat offers an intimate, peer-driven environment focused on craft, collaboration and creative development,” according to a release.

“This retreat exists for exactly this moment in a film’s life — post-production is where a documentary really finds its shape, and having the resources to provide creative time makes all the difference,” observed Elise McCave, executive director of Points North Institute. “Points North is honored to partner with the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation on an award of this scale, and we can’t wait to have both teams in Camden this September.”

The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation provides resources and support for artists, engages with the community, and sustains the legacy of its founding artists, Joan Beauregard and David Ellis. “The vision of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation is to encourage, expand and sustain the courageous and imaginative dialogue that is fundamental to the arts. The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation celebrates the value of art to transcend cultures and engage with diverse communities. Through its programs, the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation supports the exploration of the common ground that art occupies, the way it engages people, and its ability to reveal our shared human experience.”

Director: Erika Cohn; Editor: Kristina Motwani; Producers: Jaz Kealoha Berger, Rajal Pitroda; Executive Producers: Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary of Revelations Entertainment, James Younger, Insiyah Haveliwala, and Patty Quillin.

“Ear Hustle” creators Nigel Poor, Earlonne Woods and Antwan Williams travel to prisons around the world, sharing stories born on the inside. From its beginnings at San Quentin to its evolution into a global podcast phenomenon, the film traces how “Ear Hustle” has reshaped the way stories about incarceration are told, and, in the process, transformed the lives of the people telling them.

The jury described the film as bringing “a nuanced and unexpected point of view to experiences of incarceration and reentry, adapting a wildly popular podcast into compelling, character-driven cinema.”

Writer/Director: Siku Allooloo; Editors: Avrïll Jacobson, Lawrence Jackman; Producers: Jessica Hallenbeck, Siku Allooloo; Executive Producers: Sky Hopinka, Peter Bratt, Benjamin Bratt and Marie Clements

To fulfill a dying wish, a filmmaker retraces her mother’s legacy as an activist and journalist during the Red Power Movement, bringing to light 500 years of Taino resistance and igniting her own journey of reclamation.

The jury celebrated the film’s “poetic and distinct artistic vision,” noting that it “recovers a liberation story rooted in a people the world was told no longer existed.”

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