Seven filmmaker assist organizations, together with the International Documentary Association, Women Make Movies and Third World Newsreel, have signed a letter protesting Trump administration cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities that may have an effect on each unbiased documentary filmmakers and non-profit organizations. In addition to funds for future grants, the administration is rescinding grants awarded through the Biden administration — monies that filmmakers and organizations had already deliberate to spend.
The New York Times reported today:
Starting late Wednesday night time, state humanities councils and different grant recipients started receiving emails telling them their funding was ended instantly. Instead, they had been informed, the company can be “repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda.”
“Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,” the letters mentioned. “The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.”
As NPR reports, “nearly half (42%) of the federal humanities endowment goes directly to state humanities councils…. State humanities councils customarily regrant NEH money to local organizations including libraries, museums, historical societies, documentary filmmakers and others.”
The letter, reprinted beneath, urges Congress to reinstate NEH grants and assist regional humanities councils:
The International Documentary Association (IDA) and 6 different filmmaker assist organizations are deeply involved by the news that DOGE is instantly chopping U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities grant applications. The NEH’s important assist of documentaries within the U.S. contains the NEH Media Projects grant program and documentary funding grants from many U.S. state humanities councils. For a long time, they supplied significant arts programming for normal audiences, bridging scholarly analysis, documentary-making, and the general public. Since Wednesday, now we have acquired stories of dozens of grant terminations from filmmakers, affecting their capacity to pay contracted crew and ship high quality applications for audiences all around the U.S.
The blanket termination of energetic grants, together with these awarded beneath a earlier Presidential administration, is a blatant try to impose ideological management over inventive manufacturing and can proceed to devastate the affected productions. We reject the content-based suppression of documentary makers and urge Congress to reinstate NEH grants and assist regional humanities councils.
International Documentary Association
Center for Independent Documentary
Documentary Educational Resources
The Film Collaborative
Third World Newsreel
Visual Communications
Women Make Movies
Leave a Reply