Firelight Media’s mission is to support the creation, distribution, and impact of documentary media by and about communities of color in all their vibrance and complexity. By providing filmmakers mentorship, funding, and creative development, Firelight Media seeks to advance the art of nonfiction storytelling to realize a more just and beautiful world. Firelight Media envisions a world in which filmmakers, artists, and storytellers of color have abundant resources and opportunities to shape and define culture through their own images.

Over more than a century, the collective work of documentary storytelling by people of color has created new visual languages, moved the arc of history toward justice, inspired audiences, and, ultimately, created a new canon of BIPOC cinema. Yet, in the larger documentary field, BIPOC filmmakers still struggle to find artistic and financial resources to tell their stories. Firelight Media meets this challenge by supporting, resourcing, and advocating on behalf of filmmakers of color. Firelight Media was co-founded by filmmaker and MacArthur “genius” Stanley Nelson and philanthropy executive Marcia Smith in 2000. Firelight Media’s programs have grown to provide artistic and financial support to documentary filmmakers at various stages of their careers through a growing range of fellowship, grantmaking, and production programs. Current programs include the Documentary Lab; William Greaves Research & Development Fund; Frontline/Firelight Fellowship; Groundwork Regional Lab; Homegrown Shorts (partnership with PBS Digital Studios) and In The Making Shorts (partnership with PBS’ American Masters); PBS/Firelight William Greaves Production Fund; Spark Fund; Impact Campaign Fund; and Beyond Resilience.

Jerome Foundation supports Firelight Media’s Documentary Lab program. The Firelight Documentary Lab was created to build supportive infrastructure around early career filmmakers of color so important projects could be developed, produced, and distributed. Led by Lucy Mukerjee, this 18-month fellowship supports 4 early career New York City-based BIPOC filmmakers working on their first or second feature-length documentary with direct funding, customized mentorship from prominent leaders in the nonfiction film industry, professional development retreats, and networking opportunities. Now Firelight Media’s longest-running artist program, the Firelight Documentary Lab has grown over the past decade into a robust artist development initiative that has awarded over $1 million to over a hundred filmmakers, many of whom have completed their films and have gone on to secure distribution agreements.