The Ida B. Wells Fund: Disrupting the Master Narrative honors the legacy of a trailblazing American investigative journalist who not only chronicled the horrific violence of lynching against African-Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries but debunked the narratives that fueled the violence. This season the fund expands to offer awards ranging from $1000 to $25,000 in three categories—short-form filmmaking, creative placemaking, and visual arts. Chromatic Black support projects that are reflective and illustrative of the theme of disrupting the master narrative. The fund seeks work that critiques dominant social and historical narratives and embodies artistic attributes: commitment, communal meaning, disruption, cultural integrity, emotional experience, risk-taking, coherence, openness, stickiness, and resourcefulness.
“Ida B Wells Fund enables filmmakers to take disruptive risks with new original works,” says Aunjanue Ellis, Oscar Nominee, Actress, and Writer.
The award recipients will be chosen by an interdisciplinary panel composed of expert curators, filmmakers, producers, other arts professionals, scholars, and winners from last year in a thorough, multi-step review process. The fund will open for short-form film applications on July 16, 2022, followed by visual arts applicants on August 1, 2022, and creative placemaking on October 1, 2022.
“Not only are artists producers of aesthetic objects and creators of experiences, but they also help to make places healthier, more equitable, and sustainable,” said Artistic Director, Jessica Green. The expansion of the fund to include creative placemaking is an acknowledgment of creativity as a radical act of resistance.
The program is administered by chromatic black™ and is designed as the beginning of a long-term partnership between Chromatic Black, the artist-activist, and the broader chromatic black collective.
Winners of last year’s film fund at $10,000 each include Lamard W Cher-Aime’s “Captain Zero: The Animated Series” which speaks to the importance of mental health awareness in the Black communities and Christine Swanson’s “Sunflower: The Fannie Lou Hamer Story” starring academy award nominee Aunjanue Ellis.
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chromatic black™ is a collective of 10,000 +/- artist-activists across a spectrum of creative disciplines. our vision – is the reclamation of STORY as a public common. our mission is the disruption of the master narrative with good storytelling. We understand the master narrative as violence and all of its many mutations. We are storytellers and we use our artistic platforms – art, education, film, television, live and digital entertainment – to bring about cultural change, utilizing movement intelligence to disseminate unifying narratives to combat structural violence.