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IFP-Blackhouse Multicultural Producers Lab, With Seven Inaugural Female Fellows, Announced at Sundance
IFP and Blackhouse representatives at Friday's Sundance announcement of the new lab (photo by Erik Umphery) The Independent Filmmaker Project, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced Friday a partnership with The Blackhouse Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to expand opportunities for black multi-platform content creators, to launch the IFP-Blackhouse Multicultural Producers Lab, sponsored by HBO Corporate Social Responsibility Department, beginning in January 2019. From the press release:
A cohort of seven (7) producers of innovative fiction and nonfiction projects (film, television, and digital media) were selected by IFP, Blackhouse, and HBO. These Fellows will participate in this year-long, collaborative program to expand the number of multicultural production companies; to increase their pipeline of content; and to support the sustainability of mid-career independent producers and the scale at which their projects and businesses operate. The first cohort of participating producers are all women, signaling all of the partner organizations’ focus on supporting female filmmakers.
The Fellows are Quan Lateef, Kiara Jones, JaSaun Buckner, Roche Jeffrey, Chanelle Aponte Pearson, HaJ House, and Dahéli Hall. The Lab Leaders, who are committed to guiding their progress throughout the Lab, are award-winning film, TV and digital producer Effie Brown and award-winning film and stage producer Ron Simons.
The fellows:
• Quan Lateef has worked with national and independent production companies including Discovery Communications, PBS, Bravo TV, and Viacom Networks. Currently, Quan is producing and directing content and executive producing the Afropunk Solution Sessions series.
• Kiara Jones has produced 20 features and shorts, including Premature (Sundance 2019), The Roe Effect (HBO Short Film Winner), and She’s Lost Control (winner Berlin Best New Feature and Independent Spirit Awards Nomination Best New Feature).
• JaSaun Buckner has produced content for MTV, Spotify, Vevo, HAVAS, and Omnicom. She established the creative direction for documentary acquisitions and in-house production for OWN’s Doc Club and is the creative executive managing a current Nickelodeon series.
• Rochée Jeffrey is a 2017 Film Independent Project Involve Screenwriting Fellow, FOX’s 2017 HBCU Fellow and a 2018 Humanitas Prize Finalist. Rochée was a staff writer on VH1’s dramedy series, Daytime Divas, and Showtime’s Golden Globe-nominated series, SMILF.
• HaJ House & Dahéli Hall are an African American producing team, and comedy writers of Angry Black Women, which won the 2017 Just For Laughs Pro Comedy Prize. Dahéli’s past works, The Memo and Mandingo in a Box, won HBO short film awards.
• Chanelle Aponte Pearson is an award-winning writer, director, and producer from the Bronx, New York. Her filmmaking career began as producer for the critically acclaimed feature An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Sundance Film Festival, 2012). Chanelle most recently produced the award-winning short film Fucked Like a Star, which premiered at BAMcinemaFest in 2018 and screened at the inaugural Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture Film Festival. She is also executive producer for the HBO series Random Acts of Flyness.
