Non -profit women in the United States are making one of the thousands of organizations in which President Donald Trump’s discounts suffered from granting federal person. diverse I spoke to the executive director Dibera Zimmerman at the Swiss Documentary Film Festival, Du Réel, whose program included two WMM: Amber Fares “Coexceptce, My Ass!” And Sarvnik Kau “disorder”.
Women make films one of the thousands of organizations affected by the United States affected by the abolition of the federal human administration in the Trump administration of federal scholarships.
The modern cuts targeted the national endowment of humanities, a federal agency that supports museums, historical sites, archives, libraries, teachers and media projects in all fifty states. According to Zimmerman, this step has left many film makers from her pocket and is not sure how to move forward.
Sarvnik Core was one of the projects that were shown at VISIONS du Reel
With the permission of the visions de Rail
“The cuts represent a total loss of $ 1.2 million. This is the money that should go directly to film makers,” Zimmerman said. “These grants have been completed without time to submit payment applications for the money that has already been spent. In fact, there is a condition in the contract that he says is not allowed to do so. He puts film makers in a terrible position.”
She continued: “It is a complete waste of money that the government has already invested in these projects – this means that it may never be complete.”
Zimmerman participated with the diversity of the WMM notification, which claimed that the immediate end of the grant was necessary to “protect the interests of the federal government, including its financial priorities.”
Email books: “End of the scholarship is an urgent priority for management, and because of exceptional circumstances, the traditional notification process cannot be adhered to.” The e -mail added that Neh will “re -allocate its funding in a new direction in strengthening the president’s agenda.”
At least 75 % of the NEH employees are expected to be reduced, according to a statement issued by the union representatives.
Along with six other organizations supporting film makers, including the international documentary ASSN. And World World NewsREEL, WMM responded with a letter urging Congress to intervene.
“The comprehensive termination of active grants, including those granted under a previous presidential administration, is a blatant attempt to impose ideological control over technical production and will continue to destroy the affected products,” says the message. “We reject the content of the content -based documentary films and urge Congress to re -grant NEH and support regional human councils.”
WMM was founded in 1972, WMM built a catalog for more than 700 films and supported nearly 3,000 filmmakers through the production aid program. More than half of these films are women with various backgrounds, including LGBTQI women, women of color, women with disabilities and older women.
There were two new films of the program graduates at VISIONS du Réel: “Strangers & Stayers”, directed by Julia Dahr, Juli Long Lilster, Hannah Gyantity, and “Jamal Al -Hamir”, directed by De Ginovshi.
Zimmerman confirmed the role of her organization in defending the voices of an active actress in an increasingly dominant scene of broadcasting platforms and coordination.
“We are very committed to self -representation,” she said. “We go to those who reach the masses – whether it is a museum, a societal group, a library, and a university, whatever it is – we focus a lot on the popular rules, to work in society, or find people who need to see a movie or want to see it for empowerment.”
It resulted in the strategy. WMM distributed “Dust Girls” from Julie Dash in 1991, the first feature film directed by an African American woman who gets a wide theatrical release in the United States Zimmerman also indicates the success of “encrypted bias” in 2020, including GAGOT systems, including Google’s recognition systems, including the GAGAT components, which were classified in Facebook.
Zimmerman is particularly concerned about what you see as a wider rows of Dei’s initiatives in the United States: “We see ourselves incredibly diverse. We are working with men who participated in guidance with women. We are working with men who produce movies with women managers. To exclude people only because they focus on a specific part of our society-it is actually a kind of Americans.”
The conversation was closed in a reflective note, which spoke three days after Visions du Réel, which was held in French -speaking Switzerland, where Swiss and French films had a strong presence throughout the festival.
“I used to say that when film makers died and went to heaven, they went to Canada or Australia. Now, I say they go to Norway or a country that speaks French.”
“French -speaking countries always support the arts because they are concerned with preserving language and culture. When the government drinks, statistics indicate that women get a fair vibration.”
While in VISIONS Du Réel, Zimmerman, along with the Robin Smith from Blue Ice Docs, spoke on a committee on the documentary distribution market in North America, as well as participation as a decision maker.
