Lesli Klainberg and Eugene Hernandez will be honored by Chicken & Egg Pictures the organization said this week. Klainberg, the Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Hernandez, its Deputy Director, will receive the 2014 Good Egg Award at the Chicken & Egg Pictures Annual Independent Film Week Celebration in New York on September 15.
Chicken & Egg Pictures is a nonprofit film fund dedicated “solely to supporting women documentary directors.” The organization matches strategic financial support with creative mentorship offered at critical stages in the work of filmmakers.
The Good Egg Award is given annually “to distinguished leaders in the independent and documentary film community.” Past recipients include Cynthia Lopez, now the Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media & Entertainment; Cara Mertes, the current Director of the JustFilms initiative at Ford Foundation; POV founder Marc Weiss; and Claire Aguilar of ITVS.
Chicken & Egg noted Klainberg and Hernandez's accomplishments in the following:
“Klainberg has an incredible record, across more than two decades, not only through her work at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and as Executive Director of NewFest, New York's LGBT Film Festival, but as a producer and director of acclaimed independent documentaries. She has also worked as a Consulting Producer for the Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program and was Co-Leader of IFP’s Documentary Lab for three years.”
'Hernandez has made tremendous contributions with his work at Indiewire, which he co-founded and led as Editor-in-Chief, and involvement with a host of documentary programs and festivals including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sundance Documentary Fund, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and many more.”
“We couldn't be more delighted to present Lesli and Eugene with the 2014 Good Egg Award,” said Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures. “They are both pillars of the film community, respected and well-loved, and together at the helm of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, they are in a position to build and expand on their already impressive accomplishments. It will be exciting to see how they continue to champion and shape the world of independent film.”
Since 2005, Chicken & Egg Pictures supported more than 170 film projects with over $3.4 million in grants and 5,000 hours in mentorship directly to filmmakers. Films supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures have gone on to win Academy Awards®, Emmy® Awards, Peabodys, and the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize; and changed hearts, minds, and policy in the process. Chicken & Egg Pictures connects filmmakers with activists, NGOs, film festivals, and others to collaborate for social, economic, and environmental justice as well as human rights. The organization has special funds dedicated to creating social change including an Environmental Film Fund, a Human Rights Film Fund, and the award-winning REEL Reproductive Justice Film Cohort.
Two Chicken & Egg Pictures grantees have been selected for IFP’s 2014 Project Forum: The Bill from director Ramona Diaz will participate in the Spotlight on Documentaries section, and (T)ERROR from directors Lyric Cabral & David Felix Sutcliffe will participate in the Documentary Lab.
The Bill is set in the Philippines, one of the world’s poorest and most populous countries, and it struggles with reproductive health policy. The Reproductive Health Bill guarantees access to contraception, maternal care, and sex education in schools. In a country where 85% of the population is Catholic, there is unrelenting opposition from the formidable Church. Nowhere are the stakes more starkly apparent than in Fabella Memorial Hospital, one of the busiest maternity public hospitals in the world. The film intercuts between the legislature and Fabella Hospital—contrasting the sluggish pace of policy development, as lawmakers parse the language of the RH Bill, and the rampant speed of childbirth, as the hospital’s whiteboard tracks the day’s deliveries. The story is told by legislators, patients, and hospital workers through a combination of immersive scenes of the hospital and footage of the Senate hearings.
(T)ERROR is the first film to document an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation, featuring unprecedented, real-time access to the investigation’s central players. The film captures the dramatic aftermath that occurs when the target of the investigation realizes he is being set up by an FBI informant. Interweaving this story with a penetrating look at the government’s broader counterterrorism campaign, the film aims to demystify the nature of America’s terrorist threat, and to illuminate the political and ethical complexities of our country’s quest to protect the homeland.
