Netflix helps launch Film Independent’s Amplifier Fellowship

Film Independent’s latest addition to its Artist Development programs is The Amplifier Fellowship.

Supported by founding sponsor Netflix, the Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship is a customised program designed to support six Black artists on the cusp of a major career breakthrough. While other programs throughout the industry are designed to help filmmakers get their foot in the door, this one is intended to see them through.

How? Through year-round support in the form of grants, mentorship and professional coaching to strengthen not only our Fellows’ craft, but to bolter business acumen, confidence, financial sustainability and ability to achieve their greater career aspirations—plus a $30,000 unrestricted grant.

“The six Fellows transcend form, medium and genre, but all share immense artistry, a wholly original voice and greater desire to create change through their stories and work,” said Angela C. Lee, associate director of artist development, Film Independent. “We’re thrilled to support this incredibly talented group.” Supported projects include:

• Project: Walk for Me
• Writer/Director: Elegance Bratton
• Logline: Walk for Me is a reverse coming out narrative about Hanna, a Black trans woman who after becoming a legendary voguer in the ballroom scene realizes that she is actually not a woman—or even really a man—and must come out and risk losing her chosen house family.

• Project: Life + Life
• Director: Contessa Gale
• Logline: An incarcerated musician struggles for healing and peace as he comes of age in this documentary-musical odyssey composed behind bars.

• Project: Coyote Boys
• Director: Hayley Elizabeth Anderson
• Logline: Homeless and wandering the streets of New Orleans, 18-year-old Trey searches for his older brother Marcus, a graffiti writer, and leaves on a train-hopping journey across America to find him. Coyote Boys is a contemporary odyssey through fringe communities, centered on rootless youth experiencing loss and loneliness—trying to find alternative ways of surviving 21st-century America.

• Project: Lincoln
• Producer/Director: Huriyyah Muhammad
• Logline: A biographical drama, set in 1968, of comedian Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit: former Hollywood millionaire, now aging, bankrupt and “cancelled” by the Civil Rights movement. Lincoln struggles to reclaim his legacy and reconcile his place in the changing racial landscape of America by landing a starring role opposite Flip Wilson the TV hit that years later would become known as Sanford and Son.

• Title: Freelancers
• Writer: Mamoudou N’Diaye
• Logline: When invoice after invoice goes unanswered, putting everyone in various financial binds, a group of four freelancing friends decide to take matters into their own hands; plan a heist, get their money by any means possible, and don’t get killed. Along the way, they stumble onto a union-busting billionaire’s nefarious plans for not only them but all of Brooklyn, forcing them to come together with whatever cobbled-together skills they have to make a stand—perhaps their final.

• Project: Us Again
• Producer/Director: Mel Jones
• Logline: A modern romance about two relationships, but only one couple. Damien (29) and Sam (27) broke up eleven months ago but have agreed to go on a second “first” date. Cutting between their two relationships—to one we hope for in the present, and the one that failed in the past.