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| | A Letter from AmDoc’s Executive Director, Erika Dilday |
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| Dear Friend,
In this moment—when polarization runs deep and truth is too often contested—the work of public media and documentary storytelling has never been more essential. We need spaces to come together, to find common ground, and to celebrate the stories that foster empathy across divides.
That’s why, on behalf of all of us at American Documentary, I invite you to our most important gathering of the year, American Documentary’s House Party: Our House. Our Stories. Our Future. This evening is more than a fundraiser; it’s an expression of joyful resistance and resilience, and a testament to the community that makes our work possible. It is a chance to be in the moment with the filmmakers, storytellers, and communities who courageously keep our stories and our future alive. |
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This year, we are incredibly proud to honor Vince Stehle and Elegance Bratton, two luminaries who embody the spirit of public media and independent documentary filmmaking.
The night will be a vibrant gathering of the storytellers and supporters who are the heart of our mission. You will share the room with the talented filmmakers behind the POV series you love, visionary industry leaders, and passionate advocates like you.
We sincerely hope you will join us. Thank you for being a part of our community and for believing in the power of story. |
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–Erika Dilday Executive Director Executive Producer, POV, POV Shorts, America ReFramed |
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| | AmDoc Celebrates Two Industry Stalwart Awardees at GalaFest 2025 |
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| Non-profit philanthropy leader Vince Stehle and award-winning filmmaker Elegance Bratton have been selected to be this year’s honorees, and will be presented their awards the night of House Party: Our House, Our Stories, Our Future.
Recognized public media leader and non-profit philanthropist Vince Stehle, whose decades-long career has been dedicated to fostering sustainable creative communities and inspiring partnerships, is the recipient of this year’s Industry Trailblazer Award.
For nearly 14 years, Vince led the Media Impact Funders (MIF), a national association of foundations and philanthropic donors supporting media in the public interest. Through his work at the MIF, Vince and his team have demonstrated to industry peers the power documentary film has in illuminating issues that funders care about.
Before his tenure at MIF, Vince worked at Surdna Foundation, a family foundation based here in New York City, helping to strengthen support for public-interest media organizations, and amplify their importance in a healthy nonprofit sector.
Stehle now serves as a consultant to the Public Media Venture Group, continuing his work to expand support and revenue for public media organizations.
Elegance Bratton, director of Pier Kids (S34), is an award-winning and boundary-breaking director, writer, and producer, and is the recipient of this year’s Creative Visionary Award.
His feature narrative debut, The Inspection, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was selected as the Closing Night film at the 60th New York Film Festival. The film received critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including Golden Globes, Gotham Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards nominations.
His breakthrough documentary, Pier Kids, premiered on POV’s 34th season. Praised for its intimate depiction of queer and trans youth in New York City, the film received the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
House Party: Our House. Our Stories. Our Future will be an unforgettable night of connection, creativity, and commitment to independent storytelling. Get ready for indie docs’ most special night of the year! |
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| AmDoc Announces DEPRIVED: Alone, Afraid & Ashamed by Jason Jenkins and Ryan Pagan as the winners of the 2025 American Documentary Award for Short Film |
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| Cecilia R. Mejia and Asad Muhammad with 2025 American Documentary Award for Short Film winners, filmmakers Jason Jenkins and Ryan Pagan |
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| With growing public interest in stories that highlight creativity behind bars, across the country, incarcerated individuals are participating in groundbreaking filmmaking and media-arts programs. Armed with cameras, mentorship, and the desire to be seen and heard, their first-person stories examine solitary confinement, generational trauma, redemption, and systemic injustice—not through the lens of Hollywood, but by the people living the experience. These are not just stories about prison; they are stories by people in prison who are reclaiming their own narrative and challenging others to reconsider what rehabilitation and reform can look like.
American Documentary has expanded support for the San Quentin Film Festival (SQFF) through 2026 aligning resources from AmDoc’s POV Engage team to strengthen work with festival co-founders and co-directors Cori Thomas and Rahsaan “New York” Thomas. The collaboration deepens AmDoc’s commitment to art made inside and to stories about incarceration told by people with lived experience who want to be seen as artists and neighbors, not statistics. The partnership elevates arts-therapy-informed filmmaking and public media access, including DRP-TV, as pathways to healing and community reentry. The 2025 San Quentin Film Festival took place October 23rd-24th, with the virtual festival running from October 27th through November 9th, 2025.
At this year’s 2nd Annual San Quentin Film Festival, AmDoc vice presidents, Asad Muhammad (VP, Impact and Engagement Strategy) and Cecilia R. Mejia (VP, External Affairs) presented Empowerment Avenue’s Returning Filmmaker Fund with a $2,500 donation from American Documentary. This award is given in the names of inside filmmakers Jason Jenkins and Ryan Pagan- the two recipients of the 2025 American Documentary Award for Short Film. We recognize Empowerment Avenue’s great success in establishing inside-outside partnerships in support of journalists, writers, and filmmakers who are continuing their professional and creative careers while living inside prison.
The staff and leadership at American Documentary were very impressed by the promising short documentary film, DEPRIVED: Alone, Afraid, & Ashamed by Jason Jenkins and Ryan Pagan. Their film hits on critical themes such as addressing the chronic loneliness faced by people in prison. We admire the bravery the filmmakers displayed as storytellers and as researchers illustrating a process of changemaking inside prison. We see the great potential that this film has in engaging the American public with the vital importance of both getting and staying connected to people inside prison.
Our organization champions documentaries that serve the public good through social advocacy and awareness. For 2024-2025, we offered the following to the two filmmakers of DEPRIVED: Alone, Afraid, & Ashamed: Digital distribution of film via the AmDoc website and YouTube channel Impact Campaign Consultation and Outreach Support to Prison Librarians, Programmers and Doc Clubs DEPRIVED: Alone, Afraid, & Ashamed will be considered for PBS distribution
“The American Documentary Award for Short Film gives system-impacted filmmakers their flowers and helps give their careers momentum upon returning to society,” said Rahsaan Thomas, co-founder and co-director, San Quentin Film Festival. “That’s one of the best things you can do for public safety–give people a path past their barriers.”
“Too often, people in prison are left out of our imaginations when we think of emerging filmmakers and who counts as the American public,” said Asad Muhammad, Vice President of Impact and Engagement Strategy. “Over the last four years at AmDoc, we have been intentionally building partnerships and innovative programs to change that through arts-based education. The AmDoc recognition invites other public media partners and funders to take note and join us in opening up opportunities to better support these talented storytellers in prisons at a time when it may matter most in their lives!”
HERE you can learn more about AmDoc’s support and documentary programming for people currently living in prisons, and our work with filmmakers who have returned home from prison. |
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| American Documentary to Receive Award at the 2025 Hamptons Doc Fest On behalf of American Documentary, Executive Director Erika Dilday will accept the HDF Impact Award at this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest (HDF) on December 5th, 2025.
The award recognizes AmDoc’s decades-long commitment to championoing independent documentary filmmakers and leveraging the power of non-fiction storytelling that reflects the diversity, complexity, and urgency of our world.
We’re also proud to celebrate POV Season 38’s Between Goodbyes ‘s inclusion in this year’s festival lineup. The film marks the feature debut of first-time director Jota Mun, and will premiere December 8, 2025 on POV on PBS. Read the full press release on AmDoc.org. |
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| American Documentary hosts NYC Partners in Nonfiction event at DCTV! AmDoc, in continuing our partnership with DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, hosted their annual mixer event at the historic theater. The event, meant to be a space for the nonfiction community of NYC to mix and mingle, featured a special fireside chat with Stephen Maing, director POV Season 38’s UNION.
Other Events! AmDoc’s Chris White (VP of Programming & Production, Executive Producer, POV, POV Shorts, America ReFramed) attended Ji.hlava Film Festival as a featured jury judge! American Documentary hosts screening event and Q&A session with The Ride Ahead at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema! Co-presented by American Documentary/POV, FWD-DOC, Westchester Institute for Human Development, LikeRightNow Films, and NYC Public Schools' Division of Inclusive & Accessible Learning.
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| POV Shorts Season 8 Premieres November 18th & 25th!
The award-winning nonfiction short film series, POV Shorts, returns for its 8th season on November 18th and 25th on local PBS stations and on PBS.org. November 18th will see the premiere of four amazing short films: Chasing Time, The People Could Fly, MnM, and Your Opinion, Please. To finish off the season, Songs of Black Folk, La Orquesta, Classroom 4, and La nueva ola de añil (The New Indigo Wave), will premiere on November 25th.
Congratulations to Songs of Black Folk for making DOC NYC’s SHORT LIST Songs of Black Folk has been chosen to be part of 2025 DOC NYC’s Short List, Winner’s Circle & Select Encores, and will have an in-person screening on November 13, 2025 at 11:00AM at the IFC Center Theater 1 in New York City. The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-directors Justin Emeka and Haley Watson! Get your tickets here.
The film will also be available to stream online at the theater’s website from November 12-30, 2025.
Congratulations to Classroom 4 for their Critics Choice Awards Nomination! Classroom 4 is a Critics Choice nominee for Best Short Documentary. Tune in to the awards ceremony on November 11, 2025 to see the results! |
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| What defines community? What brings people together? What does community look like?
Our latest collection is curated around the nature of community in an era of cultural, social and political division. Springing from a desire to connect with others around shared experience, collective memory and culture, communities provide a pivotal transformative counter to peril, loss and grief. This collection presents POV features and POV Shorts that imagine various ways communities define themselves, their goals, needs and ideals, and how histories, personal experiences and geography influence how communities look and feel.
From undaunted grassroots organizers confronting violence in their communities in Murders That Matter and The Body Politic; to activists united around accessibility and inclusion in All Riders; to American Seams, Águilas and A Story of Bones where bonds are forged by traditional craft, loss and memorial; and MnM and Jardines, intimate portraits of people whose identity and self expression are deeply entwined with dignity and safety.
These stories demonstrate that community is a shared effort built through dreams, perseverance, resistance, and that Getting Back to Abnormal is only possible through collective healing and joy. Getting Back to Abnormal will have an encore streaming from November 1st, 2025 to January 31st, 2026. Additionally, Brief Tender Light, and Fire Through Dry Grass will also have an encore streaming until November 30th, 2025.
Watch these visionary stories about community spaces and places and the people who create connections, transform themselves and others, and make a difference out of necessity and hope.
As AmDoc gears up for our annual GalaFest 2025 event, we are celebrating Our House. Our Stories. Our Future. This House Party themed event is organized in celebration of the community of filmmakers, supporters and viewers and the stories we tell.
Community Grassroots: The Different Flavors of Organizing is now streaming on PBS.org. |
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| The Bitter Pill Rapid Fire Fast Five with the directors of The Bitter Pill Get to know The Bitter Pill directors, Clay Tweel and — from the stories that shaped them, to the creative tools they can’t live without, to what drives them to tackle the complex realities of the opioid crisis. |
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| Breaking News: Major Victory for The Bitter Pill’s Protagonist The 4th Circuit has upheld the appeal in Paul Farrell Jr.'s case, the film’s protagonist, rejecting every part of Judge Faber's ruling and are remanding the case back to West Virginia. West Virginia’s nuisance law could be applied to the distribution of opioids.
Read more about the news here: Federal appeals court overturns West Virginia landmark opioid lawsuit decision (CBS News) US appeals court overturns West Virginia landmark opioid lawsuit decision (AP News) US appeals court revives $2.5 billion opioid lawsuit in West Virginia (Reuters)
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| A Mother Apart
A Mother Apart: Rewriting the Story of Black Queer Motherhood with Laurie Townshend
In her interview with GLAAD’s Tymia Ballard, the film’s director Laurie Townshend says, “I hope that A Mother Apart, a film that dares to centre historically ignored and marginalized themes of Black queer motherhood, intergenerational healing, and Black joy, will ignite conversations about storytelling sovereignty and what we stand to gain when we’re in positions to write, develop, and produce our own narratives.” Read the full interview here.
Critical Acclaim for A Mother Apart Sa’iyda Shabazz: “Throughout A Mother Apart, we get these lovely little nuggets of Chin’s relationship to her growing daughter. Through old social media videos and current conversations the two have, we’re able to piece together the deep love they have for each other. It was her relationship with her daughter that I was most interested in when we talked.” Read the full post here.
A Mother Apart is now streaming on PBS.org/POV until January 11th, 2026. |
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| SUPPORT AMDOC!
Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution today. Your support helps AmDoc continue to diversify public discourse nationally with our award-winning, artful films, and engage with our communities to make an impact beyond the broadcast.
Join our new AmDoc Story Heroes Club! By contributing at one of the levels below, you’ll join the Story Heroes club. As a member, you’ll receive exclusive invitations to AmDoc events and conversations, all while playing a vital role in sustaining public media, empowering independent creators, and bringing untold stories to the public spaces where they matter most.
Giving Levels Friend – $15 per month ($180 per year) Invitation to exclusive virtual conversations with AmDoc filmmakers and producers Exclusive discounts & priority registration to film screenings & events across the US A donor-exclusive newsletter with special features from our filmmakers and programs
Storyteller – $1,000+ / year All Friend level benefits 2 complimentary tickets to our annual AmDoc Gala in New York City Recognition in AmDoc’s Annual Report AmDoc Story Heroes welcome package (including t-shirt and other AmDoc swag!)
Change-maker – $5,000+ / year All Storyteller level benefits Recognition in AmDoc’s Website and Newsletters 2 additional complimentary Gala tickets (4 total)
Visionary – $25,000+ / year All Change-maker level benefits Invitations to exclusive in-person events and meet-ups with AmDoc filmmakers, producers, and AmDoc across the U.S. Recognition as a sponsor in series' credits
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