“We Want to Support and Hold Artists”: BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship Organizers Discuss Building a Community of Care

At this moment in our industry, when everyone is trying to find a solution to the distribution crisis, BAVC Media continues to adapt in order to support filmmakers’ visions through radical access and strong community-building, as it has been doing since 1991. The long-running MediaMaker Fellowship, co-led by BAVC Media Director of Youth and Artistic Development Programs Dawn Valadez, MediaMaker Fellowship Co-Director Jin Yoo-Kim, and Associate Director of Artist Development Brittney Réaume, focuses on supporting documentary filmmakers that have bold cinematic language and innovative impact strategies to grapple with critical issues of our time. 

Both Valadez and Réaume are BAVC veterans: Valadez has been a MediaMaker fellow and board member and Réaume has collaborated with the organization for over 10 years. Yoo-Kim is getting a master’s in clinical psychology to incorporate her learnings into her work. The three of them join forces to design, update, and nurture a program that is praised by filmmakers. 

Documentary met with the three MediaMaker co-directors after an intense three-day retreat with the current MediaMaker fellows. The conversation, edited here for length and clarity, touched on how the prestigious fellowship stays true to their promise to filmmakers of providing radical access and building community by internally modeling what they preach. 

DOCUMENTARY: How did you stay true to your mission during the rebranding of Bay Area Video Collective to BAVC Media and the merger with Reel Stories? And what have been the challenges of the merging, if any?

DAWN VALDEZ: I was a member of BAVC when I first moved to San Francisco in 1989, and have been involved ever since, it has always been a home. Way back then, most people didn’t have their own editing system at home. Being able to go somewhere and use equipment and technology, take classes, and meet with other media makers was really valuable. The core values of the mission of BAVC continue to be the same, as they have been for nearly 50 years. We believe in radical access, participation and the idea that people can learn together, that there is beauty and value in the collective work we do. 

The merger with Reel Stories happened in 2021, at a time when due to the COVID shutdown it was very difficult for small arts organizations to survive and many collapsed. Executive Director Paula Smith Arrigoni and Reel Stories founder Esther Pearl were very wise in thinking that we should merge. When you look at the data coming out of UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report, the numbers of women, and we could expand that to gender-expansive people, continue to be dismally small. And then when we add people of color and people with disabilities, those numbers continue to be dismal. So merging with Reel Stories made perfect sense because we know that in order to get people ready to make films, regardless of the type of films they want to make, we have to prepare them with the skills and the tools that they need at a very young age. Our youngest programs are for 11-year-olds—I see it as a full pipeline.

BRITTNEY RÉAUME: Any one of our major programs could be its own organization but in this ecosystem, it benefits us and our community to create a really vast diversity of media makers. There have been mergers that happened years before any of us were part of BAVC. We have been giving a home to community media where it might not have otherwise been able to survive and that brings so much richness to our organization. 

For example, BAVC Preservation was developed because there was a need to preserve early media art and works on tape that were created by artists, activists, and marginalized people telling their own histories and continuing to preserve cultural history on a smaller scale. These histories could otherwise easily be lost to time with the degradation of magnetic media.

D: How do you share your collective vision with your team? 

DV: We have a very diverse team. We value those who work in our organization who bring the academic as well as those with lived experiences. We try to balance it with as much collective wisdom of the group to help us guide us strategically, programmatically, financially, etc. When we match the MediaMaker Fellows with mentors, we match them with people in the field who we may have close contact with or maybe we don’t, but we know the work that they do and we trust their expertise. We trust the people in our field to support each other. We believe in that kind of mutual respect and mutual support.

JYK: Speaking specifically for the MediaMaker Fellowship, we have people who after being fellows are then part of the reviewing process for the next cycle or becoming mentors. For example, Kristina Motwani was a 2017 fellow and this year was the editing consultant for our last edit session. After having gone through that program herself, she was able to give back, which allows you to start becoming a family together. That makes our program distinct. You definitely feel like you’re part of a bigger ecosystem.

BR: Something that our past fellows tell us is the most valuable thing that they’ve gotten out of the fellowship is that their relationships with each other expand beyond the time they have together with us and that that is the main difference from their experiences at other fellowships. We actively try to foster peer connection and support because that’s going to be the most valuable thing that we can give them.

D: What do you do to build community care at BAVC? 

JYK: Because of Dawn’s background as a social worker and my recent studies in clinical psychology, we do see that there is a huge mental health gap in documentary filmmaking, not just about self-care, but about how we take care of each other in community. Sometimes it’s almost easier to take care of your community than saying I’m gonna take care of myself. But in reality, you are taking care of yourself when you take care of your community. How do we build a more sustainable model of filmmaking that’s not necessarily money-driven, but mental health-driven, care-driven, in a trauma-informed way? Even your audience, what are you leaving your audience with?

Sometimes you watch traumatizing documentaries and you don’t know where to put all those feelings because the filmmaker didn’t take care of you as an audience member to help heal after being exposed to trauma. There’s a lack of discussion around that and Documentality has talked about it in their recent Price of Passion Report.

D: Sometimes, when we try to create a safe space, we leave a lot of people out. What does BAVC Media consider as safe space?

DV: We’ve moved away from saying safe space and started saying safer space because we can’t create a safe space because it is different for each person. We can only take between seven and nine people in the MediaMaker Fellowship. We get 175 applications and there are many good projects and people applying. We also want to make sure that other people have access to the range of opportunities that we offer. Thanks to Brittney’s great tracking of things we have been able to demonstrate that there is a need and raise additional funds for the MediaMaker Connect program. There, we go through the application list and match folks with mentors. It has been such an important expansion of the MediaMaker Fellowship. We also have been thinking on how to share our knowledge. We are not the only fellowship out there. How can we create more spaces and expand them? 

JYK: We’re definitely trying to create more access while still maintaining the intimacy and creating a space where people can be as vulnerable and share as much as possible without feeling unprepared. 

D: In a time where distribution is making things even harder, how do you define bold cinematic language? And how does your selection process ensure that the fellows selected match your expectations of bold and innovative?

BR: Over recent years we have been encouraging fellows to find the confidence in themselves, to stand behind their vision. Obviously, that’s with the consent and collaboration of the other people making the film with them, because there’s no such thing as a film made by oneself.  Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of applications from people that seem to rush the process and have really fast timelines and I’ve been saying, “You only make your first feature once, don’t throw away the opportunity to take as much time as you need to make the film that you and your collaborators want to make.” 

DV: There is pain around distribution, but I don’t want people to give up making these powerful, beautiful films that tell unique stories. There’s always going to be a place for people to show their work. It may not be the big splash at an A-level film festival or whatever hot streamer there is this year but they will be seen by the communities and people that want to see it. I want people to make work that they love, believe in, and feel proud of. This is an artist program.

We’re supporting artists with a social consciousness about story. We’re looking for people with an artistic and cinematic perspective and a point of view of the film that they’re making. We understand that the market for these films goes up and down—it’s all over the place. So we want to support and hold artists. We want to create space for artists who understand we live within a capitalist system. 

BR: Every application is read by at least 3 people and that always includes people who are not staff members of BAVC. Usually, that’s alumni of the program, but sometimes it’s other filmmakers or other people working in the industry. And we also pay them because that’s the only equitable way to do it. We also give feedback to everyone. It’s a several-month process of going through various stages of reading and considering applications to be able to come up with a cohort that speaks to each other. Every year is different, you can never predict what it’s going to look like.

JYK: The majority of this year’s cohort are reapplicants. Some of them even have gone through our MediaMaker Connect program when they didn’t get in last time. We’re developing these artists even before they get into the program because we still value their voice and we see something in their projects and we want to make sure that isn’t lost in the process. This fellowship can help them through one of the most challenging and difficult times in their edits or in their filmmaking process. 

You can create your own distribution models. It’s good to know there are alternatives and ways that filmmakers can empower themselves and self-generate screenings and community screenings. You can take part in whatever fits your film’s vision and how you want it to connect with your audience. Independent film wasn’t ever really answering to media giants anyway.

D: What excites you the most about the future of the MediaMaker Fellowship?

DV: One thing I love about this program’s legacy is that since its early inception, it has been handed down. I love the idea that I may not be the co-director forever but we’ve created a structure that is beautiful and that other people can come in and add their spice to it. I’ve carried on some of the spice from other amazing folks, like Niema Jordan, Rodrigo Reyes, Nico Opper, Jen Gilomen, and Carrie Lozano. It also excites me that we’ve got funders who really get what we’re doing and understand why this is so important and want to continue to support it. It is exciting to me that the leadership of the program will always come from filmmakers themselves.

JYK: I just want the fellows who have gone through this program to continue thriving. It’s less about completing their films. It’s more about being able to find their happiness and their creative freedom to create the stories that they want to tell. We’re not the answer to everyone’s filmmaking dreams. I hope filmmakers know that we’re here for them for support, the doors are always open for them. 

BR: BAVC is both local and national. We are working with the NEA to support all kinds of independent media producers and exhibitors, people who are working in small regions on their own, such as with their own local governments to create their own filmmaking hubs. We are very interested in supporting people doing things in their own local communities, and that’s also where change can happen. Sometimes, the smaller is the better. 

Mariana Sanson is a 2022 Documentary Magazine Editorial Fellow and the communications manager at Chicken & Egg Pictures.