Brown Girls Doc Mafia recently announced their selections for the Black Directors Fellowship and Sustainable Artist Fellowship, the organization’s most in-depth, ambitious filmmaker support effort yet. Formerly the BGDM Black Directors and Sustainable Artist Grants, the initiatives were re-envisioned in 2022 as Fellowships to provide more holistic professional development support including grantmaking, mentorship, and curated industry connections. Featured in this year's selection is Zimbabwean Director & Cinematographer Nyasha Kadandara.
We’re thrilled to launch these two initiatives for 2022-2023 — re-envisioned as comprehensive Fellowships — to fill the gap in the current documentary ecosystem that doesn’t prioritize the needs of BIPOC women and nonbinary filmmakers. The Fellowships will take a holistic approach that considers the entirety and sustainability of their career and long-term future. Our focus with this reenvisioning is to emphasize the community-building aspect of the program as a way to ensure our Fellows thrive within a sense of intentionally cultivated belonging, purpose, safety, and strength. We believe that these relationships are the seeds that will sow deeper change in the documentary industry over the next twenty years, enabling this ‘great age of documentary’ to be more diverse, equitable, just, and inclusive. - BGDM Executive Director Iyabo Boyd.
Nyasha is an award-winning pan-African director and cinematographer who tells stories that traverse the continent and reflect alternative voices. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School. In 2015, her first film 'Through the Fire' about a recovering drug user facing the demons of his past won the Audience Choice Award for a short documentary at Atlanta Docufest. Her short documentary 'Queens & Knights' about a gay and inclusive rugby team won first prize at the 2016 NBC Sports film contest Cptr’d and premiered at South by SouthWest.
In 2019, she wrote, filmed, and produced 'Sex and the Sugar Daddy' an extensive multimedia piece on transactional sex relationships in Kenya which was a finalist for the One World Media Awards in the Popular Feature and Digital Media categories. Nyasha's latest work includes 'Le Lac' a virtual reality documentary that looks at the effects of climate change and the Boko Haram insurgency around Lake Chad. 'Le Lac' won the Digital Narrative Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2019 and is currently on the festival circuit. And, her investigative documentary 'Imported for my Body' about cross-continental sex trafficking was shortlisted for the Amnesty Media Awards in 2020 and selected for the Human Rights Watch Festival in Kenya.
Most recently, Nyasha served as a juror for World Press Photo's digital storytelling contest and has been selected to participate in 2021's Berlinale Talents. Currently, she is developing her first Independent feature documentary 'Matabeleland' and her first narrative feature 'Come Sunrise, We Shall Rule'.
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