Image credit: Josh S. Rose. Courtesy of Catapult
Today, Catapult Film Fund announces that longtime industry executive Tabitha Jackson is the newest member of its board. One of documentary’s most respected thinkers and funders, Jackson has a 30-year career spanning broadcast commission at the UK’s Film4 and Channel 4 and a relocation to the U.S. to direct the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. At Sundance, she initiated the Art of Nonfiction Fellowship and received plaudits for decrying the “hegemony of story,” shifting the Documentary Film Program’s mandate toward formal innovation. After seven years in that post, Jackson succeeded outgoing Sundance Festival Director John Cooper in 2020.
After Jackson unexpectedly left Sundance in 2022, she held a couple of high-profile documentary film fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab.
“We are delighted that Tabitha, with her immeasurable experience and insight, has joined our board,” said Lisa Kleiner Chanoff, co-founder and chair of the Board of Directors. “We look forward to working together to continue to strive and innovate to fulfill Catapult’s mission to support creative documentary filmmakers at the most crucial moments in the filmmaking process.”
Catapult was co-founded by Chanoff and fellow board member Bonni Cohen in 2010. In the 14 years since, the film fund has made a name as a rare supporter of creative documentaries in the very early stages, from research and development to pre-production, in addition to a rough cut lab with True/False Film Festival. In total, Catapult has issued $5.5 million in direct grants to over 250 film teams, including American Factory, All That Breathes, Crip Camp, and Sugarcane (the latter two are also IDA grantees).