“Color Congress, a national collective of majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling by, for and about people of color in the US, has launched in advance of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival,” Filmmaker magazine reported this January leading up to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. “Founded by documentary impact and field-building strategists Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress, the collective will invite POC-led doc-serving organizations to apply for unrestricted two-year funding from a $1.35 million fund, and later in the year, they’ll be invited to join the Congress and direct over $1 million in grants aimed at addressing field challenges.”
“After spending the last two decades leveraging the power of documentary film, I understood the power — and the limits — of what a single film can accomplish,” said Color Congress co-founder Sonya Childress in a press release. “Today’s existential challenges require a sea-change in thought and action; so to truly catalyze social change we need robust cinema authored by people closest to the most critical issues of our time. By supporting the organizations that nurture filmmakers of color, we can ensure impactful nonfiction storytelling will flourish.”