With so many fundamental human rights currently under attack in this country, we’re gathering to listen, to learn and to take action. Join us for a conversation with documentary filmmakers who have been on the front lines of Reproductive Justice including Film Fatales members Cynthia Lowen (Battleground), Emma Pildes (The Janes), Tracy Droz Tragos (Abortion: Stories Women Tell) and Angela Tucker (Belly of the Beast). We will hear what they’ve seen, what they’ve learned, how they feel about the current situation and what they, and we, as artists, can do now. With support from community partners Women Make Movies, New York Women in Film and Television, BVAC Media and rePro Film.
Sundance Institute Announces 2021 Screenwriters Lab Fellows
PARK CITY, UTAH — Fifteen emerging storytellers from Chile, India, Kenya, Tunisia and the U.S. will convene digitally for Sundance Institute’s January Screenwriters Lab, taking place online via Sundance Co//ab from January 11 -15, 2021. The Fellows will work to further develop twelve original projects, in collaboration with an experienced group of Creative Advisors. Under the leadership of Michelle Satter (Founding Director, Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program) and Ilyse McKimmie (the Program’s Deputy Director), the Creative Advisors include: Scott Frank (Artistic Director), Ritesh Batra, Andrea Berloff, Rodrigo Garcia, Amanda Idoko, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Doug McGrath, Walter Mosley, Jessie Nelson, Nicole Perlman, Howard Rodman, Elena Soarez, Dana Stevens, Robin Swicord, Joan Tewkesbury, Bill Wheeler, and Tyger Williams.
“At this time of unprecedented change, we’re so fortunate to virtually gather this inclusive group of bold and vibrant filmmakers and Advisors for a week of story meetings, craft workshops, and life-long creative relationships that have long been a hallmark of our Labs,” said Satter. “We strongly believe that storytellers have the power to reimagine and rewrite the future, and we’re excited to launch this next generation of filmmakers with a year-round support system beginning with the January Lab.”
For over 35 years, the FFP Labs have supported and championed an exciting and ground-breaking array of independent filmmakers including Radha Blank (The 40-Year-Old Version), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Chloe Zhao (Songs My Brother Taught Me), Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats), Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl), Fernando Frias de la Parra (I'm No Longer Here), Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), Edson Oda (Nine Days), Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station), Dee Rees (Pariah), Nia DaCosta (Little Woods), Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox) and Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), among many others.
The Macrobiotic Toker (U.S.A.)
Tracy Droz Tragos (writer/director)
Living in a mommune, balancing her alternative lifestyle and a bitter separation, Sula’s life is plunged into potential chaos by an unplanned pregnancy. After discovering how to procure abortion pills online, she travels an unexpected path to become an underground supplier, an accidental pro-choice activist, and ultimately, a convicted felon. Inspired by true events.
Tracy Droz Tragos is a writer, filmmaker, and mother of two kids. Her documentary work includes Abortion: Stories Women Tell, the HBO film about unplanned pregnancies and resilience; Be Good, Smile Pretty, an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the grief and healing of survivors of the Vietnam War; and Rich Hill (Grand Jury Prize, U.S. Documentary, 2014 Sundance Film Festival) for which she embedded in the homes of low-income families in rural Missouri. In 2020, Tragos won a Guggenheim Fellowship for her long-form work on the documentary Sarah. Way back in 1993, she received her MFA in screenwriting from USC.
AprIL 9, 2020
2020 Guggenheim Fellowship winners announced
TRACY DROZ TRAGOS announcement
On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 writers, scholars, artists, and scientists. 2020 Fellows are drawn from 53 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 78 different academic institutions, 31 states and the District of Columbia, and 2 Canadian provinces. Close to 60 Fellows have no full-time college or university affiliation.
Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-sixth competition. Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted more than $375 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, poets laureate, members of the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and many other internationally recognized honors.
Created by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son, the Guggenheim Fellowship program remains a significant source of support for artists, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, and scientific researchers. In addition to the generous support of Senator Simon and Mrs. Olga Guggenheim, new and continuing donations from friends, Trustees, former Fellows, and other foundations have ensured that the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will maintain its historic mission. An exceptionally generous bequest in 2019 from the estate of the great American novelist Philip Roth, a Fellow in 1959, is providing partial support for the wide variety of writers supported by the Foundation.
Tracy Droz Tragos is the Emmy and Sundance Award-winning director behind such films as “Rich Hill” and “Be Good, Smile Pretty.” Her new film “Abortion: Stories Women Tell” will air on HBO later this year, but is premiering tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival. Indiewire asked Tragos if she’d be willing to share her experiences taking on this controversial subject and what we got was this very personal essay about the process and struggle of trying to tell the story of what women with unintended pregnancies go through to have an abortion in the U.S.
Read the full article here.
HBO's upcoming documentary "Abortion: Stories Women Tell" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2016 to amazing reception. Join filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos as she discusses the film and where we are as a nation today on the issue of abortion.
Read the announcement via RealScreen.
Directors Tracy Droz Tragos and Rory Kennedy have joined the roster at Nonfiction Unlimited, a production company that represents documentarians for commercial work.
By Tracy Droz Tragos
This year’s GETTING REAL conference fell at an introspective and ripe time in my life as a documentary filmmaker. For most of my career, I have felt decidedly on the outside looking in at those special folks who visit war zones, interview presidents, whistle-blowers and celebrities, get the big grants and commercial work, and generally manage to make a living at filmmaking. I have envied those who, as Sundance Documentary Film Program Director Tabitha Jackson describes it, are "Curators of Outrage." Especially during my hiatus for motherhood, I was a complete outsider—in a world of diapers, parenting books and nap schedules. The only outrage I felt was in my own choices and how desperately I longed to return to filmmaking, without a roadmap for how I might get there one day.
Read her full article on Documentary.org
Read the full article here.
Tracy Droz Tragos won an Emmy Award for her first documentary, Be Good, Smile Pretty, which aired on PBS’s Independent Lens and chronicled her journey to know her father, who was killed in Vietnam. With Rich Hill, Droz Tragos returns to her father’s hometown to explore familiar themes by following the lives of three local boys who yearn to find solace in their scattered families and belonging in their impoverished community.
At Traverse City Film Festival, Michael Moore was exceedingly kind to all the families in our film - big-hearted and gracious. Here’s the Q & A after one of our screenings.
Made almost 40 years after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, this documentary underlines why we must not forget the lessons of that war.
Stories of war need to be told. And it is a moral imperative that filmmakers continue to tell them with whatever means, be they fictional or non-fictional, they have at their disposal. Ultimately it’s the politicians, especially those who have never been in combat, who need to see these films. In my fantasy world, seeing them would be a requirement for any elected official wishing to cast a vote.
Viewing might start with Gallipoli. Then maybe Schindler’s List and The Thin Red Line. And on to The Deer Hunter, followed by Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now. Some Restrepo, The Fog of War and To Hell and Back, not to mention 5 Broken Cameras and The Hurt Locker. I’m just getting started, but you get the idea.
Read the rest of the story on The Talkhouse.
Former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife face corruption charges, Rand Paul begins to act like a presidential candidate, and Tracy Droz Tragos discusses "Rich Hill."
Watch the interview here.
RICH HILL is a new documentary that explores the lives of American boys that are living below the poverty line and struggling with abuse and many other issues. A dramatic true story of Main St. USA, in a way that isn’t exploitative or “poverty porn,” we discuss the film and look at clips and the trailer with filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos in this uncensored interview on BYOD, hosted by Ondi Timoner.
There's a tiny town in Missouri, just off Interstate 49, called Rich Hill. You'd easily miss it if you blinked driving past. Forgettable though it often may be, the town is the setting of Sundance Film Festival's 2014 Documentary Grand Jury Winner, Rich Hill.
By Tracy Droz Tragos
Once upon a time there was coal and ambition in Rich Hill—a rural town in southwestern Missouri with a population of 1,330—but shortly after World War II most of both ran dry.
For me, the most important thing about Rich Hill is family. It’s the town where my father grew up. He was killed in Vietnam when I was three months old, and my relationship with his family, particularly my grandparents, was especially close. They were like surrogate parents and a huge influence on my life and my work. My grandmother was the third grade school teacher in Rich Hill; my grandfather owned the town grocery store, and when he was forced to close it, he became the rural mail carrier. Both my grandparents worked hard and although they would never be considered well off, they were fortunate to have steady jobs and a home. And they gave back to their community.
Read the rest of the story on The Daily Beast.
Interview with Tracy Droz Tragos on the film Rich Hill.
By Tracy Droz Tragos
Here’s what I posted on Facebook a few days ago: Sweet P just lost her first tooth. And I missed it! In Raleigh on my way to Kansas City via Atlanta. I’d like to go to the bathroom and have a good cry, but we are about to take off…
Yes, my five-year-old daughter’s first tooth had come out – and I was in an airport, on a layover, between film festivals that are at opposite ends of the country. It’s been about three months since Rich Hill won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. And lately, I spend way more time at festivals than I do with my family. Missing the lost tooth is just one in a series of misses, others more significant.
From mom friends, I’ve heard, “You are an inspiration” or even “You are superwoman.” From my filmmaking friends without kids, I hear, “I don’t know how you do it.” I don’t really know how I do it either. I muddle through my days, improvising, daydreaming of windows of time to do my work – just waiting until the kids are asleep. Jealous of those young dudes just out of film school.
Read the rest of the story on The Talkhouse.
Watch the full feature here.