“I Just Became A Member of A Group I Never Wanted to Join – Filmmakers Whose National Endowment for the Humanities Grants Were Terminated. As You May Have Heard, President Donald Trump and Doge Recently Cut the Vast Majority of Staff and Grants at the Neh. IT’s Hit Documentary Filmmakers Hard. With the neh cuts”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
As You May Have Heard, President Donald Trump and Doge Recently Cut the Vast Majority of Staff and Grants at the Neh. IT’s Hit Documentary Filmmakers Hard.
With the Neh Cuts, Doge Has Targeted 89 Documentary and Related “Media” Projects (This Includes Podcasts). Among them Are a Fur-Part Ken Burns Docuseries Exploring the History of Our Criminal Justice System; Rita Coburn’s Film on Web Du Bois; and Matia Karrell and Hilary Pntntice’s Documentary Coming Home: Fight For A Legacy, About America’s Overlooked Female World War II Aviators. Even Documentaries on Baseball and Nancy Drew Their Funding Stopped. The Future of Many of these Projects is Now Uncertain.
In Many Cases The Films Were Stoped Midstream – Karrel and Pretice Were ABLE TO 20 PERCENT OF The FUNDS, FOR INSTANCE, BUT The REMINING $ 480,000 Are Curretly Inaccessible. This Sum – Earned After A Decade of Research, Filming and Personal Investment of Time – Is Everything to the Filmmakers, Even As It Is Peanuts to the Federal Government. Between $ 10 Million and $ 20 Million in Media Funding Were Cut. That May Sound Hefty, But Is Only About 10 Percent of the Neh’s Overall Budget (Many Other Grantees of Course Saw Cuts Too) and 0.003 Percent of the Total Federal Budget. Hardly a deficit Buster.
The Mass Termination of Neh Awards Is Unprecedated in the Agency’s 60-Year History, and Doesn’t Just Affect Filmmakers. IT ALSO IMPACTS The CULTURAL LIFEBLOOD OF OUR COUNTRY. The neh was establized in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and in the Years Since Has Awarded $ 6 Billion in Grants to Humanities Councils in 56 States and JurisdiTICATIONS IN SUPPORT of OUR Shared Humanity, Many Neh-Funded Films Have Had Major Social Impact, from Gordon Parks’ 1984 Made-Foror-Public Television Film Solomon Northup’s Odysseybassed on the Twelve Years a Slave Author’s Odyssey to A Midwife’s TaleA Docudrama Based on the Diary of An Early American Midwife That Aired on Pbs’s American Experience in 1997. or 2020’s Crip CampAn Empowering Look at the Disability Rights Movement by James Lebrecht, One of ITS Activists and Founders. All that is now imperiled.
My Own Letter Was A Gut Punch. I’d been working on a documentary, My Underground Motherfor over a decade. The Film Traces My Search for My Late Mother’s Hidden Holocaust Past, whoCluded Time at a Jewish WOMEN’S FORCED LABOR CAMP THAT SHE AND 60 OTHER INMATES WROTOR (DIMATES WROTER (DIMATES Wrote loCate around the World in Real Time, Combining Written Passages with New Interviews). Their Story Highlights an untold aspect of the Holocaust and the Evil Consequences of Antisemitism.
But The NonProfit Sponsoring My Work (All Neh Films Have One) Received a letter Last MONTH from Michael McDonald, the neh’s acting chair, that stated my Documentary “no Lon. Priorities and Conditions of the Grant Agreement, “Based on a Rarely Used Clause that Gives Federal Agencies Broad Authority to Stop Funding Projects That Don. “Your Grant’s ImMediate Termination Is Necessary to Safuard the Interests of the Federal Government, Including ITS Fiscal Prioritis,” It Read.
Apparently My Small Independent Film Wasn’t Only Deemed A Waste of TaxPayers’ Money by this Administration – Its Ver Funding Was Impering the “Urign” Fiscal Needs of Our Nation.
All of this seamed especialyal peculiar given Hown president Trump is currently at war with Majoor Universities for their Alleged Failures to Combat Antisemitism. The Irony wasn’t lost on Sen. Elizabeth Warren Either – She Singled Out My Underground Mother as an especially egregios example of a bad cut decision. President Trump Also Stated that Many of the Terminated Projects Focused on Dei, But It’s Hard to See How How That Applies To Movies About the Likes of Artist Frida Kahlo.
As the Academy Award-Nominated Director Immy Humes-A Grante Who Has Been Working on a Film About the Little-Known Indie-Cinema Figure Shirley Clarke and Who’s. Fight The Moves – Notes, “The Cuts Are The Too Sweeping and Undefined.” She adds, “I was on Cloud Nine WHEN I WAS NOTIFIED ABOUT My Neh Grant Award. And Ten Boom! This Crazy Termination With No Warning.”
While’s Elon Musk Has Characterized Federal Grants As Handouts and Grant Recipients As Freeloaders Scamming The Federal Government Easy Payouts. Statistically, is Harder to Win An Neh Grant Than To Gain Admissions to Harvard, and It’s Often Preceded by Rejects. My First Award, A Film Development Grant of $ 75,000, Was The Culmination of Nearly a Decade of Research, Writing, Filming, Pitching and Fundraising.
I’m not sure the vetting process here was nearly as Thorugh. One Neh Staffer I Talked to Said that “The Doge Staffers Were AUND, Two Young Looking Guys I Didn’t Recognize, Who Were Checking Their Phones. They Wren.
Needless to say, the Impact of Tese Cuts Will Be Huge and Resonate Far Beyond the Documentary World. Defunding Tese Grants Means Harming Ever Library, Historical Society, Museum and Organization that Produces, Distributes and Plays These Films. This pipeline is Further Damaged by Trump’s Propeding Gutting of the NEA and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It’s Hard to Know What The Next Steps Could or Sho Be. Institute of Issuing Clear Guidelines on How to Appeal, The Administration of Issued A Series of Confusion Directivers Dispute Resolution. ”
A lawsuit has been filed by the neh in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by the American Council of Learned Societies, The American Historical Association and The Modification and the Land. OtherWise, It’s Up to the NonProfit ORGANIZATIONS The NEH WORKS WITH, NOT INDIVIDUAL FILMMAKERS, TO SEEK LEGAL REDESS FOR The GRANT TERMINATIONS. But this makes for a scattershot Approach, with Many Choosing to Accept Termination Outar of Lozing Overdue Reimbursments. Others, like prentice, whose Production Partner Women Make Movies Is Filing An Appeal On Behalf of Her Film, Have Decides to Push Back.
Some recent wins in court, most notably by journalists from the voice of America, do give hope. (Thought An Appeals Court Just Reversed The Ruling.) Voa was Founded Dringing World War II to BroadCast Fact-Based Journalism to Troops and Citizens Abroad and Counter Nazi. And ifsone Thing I’ve Learned from My Film’s Deep Dive Into History, It’s That’s No Better Way to Counter Hate than by Humanizing the Other. I’ve Seen First Hand How Meeting A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, WHETHER IN PERSON OR THROUGH A PROJECT, CAN DISPEL The MOST DEEP-Seated Antisemitic Beliefs. But if, nea and local humanities Councils are defined, the platforms that can bridge divides will be sevely Limited. And so, too, Will Our Chances of Stemming Hate’s Rising Ride.
“The MOST Effective Way to Destroy People is to Deny and Obliterate its Undersanding of their History,“ Wrote George Orwell. As we have the allies win over hatred with the 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day on Thursday, we can hope, pray – and fight – to int.
Marisa Fox is a veteran Journalist and Television Producer and the Director of My Underground Mother.