With major support from XRM Media, the Catapult Research Grant is the newest expansion of Catapult Film Fund’s ongoing commitment to support nonfiction films and filmmakers.
This program provides a $10,000 grant plus six months of mentorship and professional development to five filmmakers in the early conception and research phase of developing a new film idea.
Too often filmmakers are expected to self-fund research and development on new projects. This can be a long and costly process. By offering research funding, the Catapult Research Grant can help sustain filmmakers during this early period while also reducing barriers to entry for a diverse slate of voices. By launching the Catapult Research Grant we hope to help contribute to filmmaker sustainability and diversity in the field.
XRM Media is an award-winning entertainment and media technology company dedicated to supporting, producing and financing diversity-driven, BIPOC content across all mediums with its global partners. XRM Media’s interests vary across all stages of the development, production, and distribution processes, including but not limited to, equity financing, co-financing, financial modeling and fund management.
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Adaeze Elechi
Adaeze Elechi is an award-winning filmmaker, audio storyteller, and author focused on telling African and Black diaspora stories. Her works are influenced by her desire to better understand the ways individual and collective histories influence our present understanding of ourselves, as well as a desire to explore spaces of intimacy and softness within and between people.
Caitlyn Greene
Caitlyn Greene is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker from the American South. She creates films that push boundaries to tell stories of our beautiful and bizarre existence.
Tracy Jarrett
Tracy Jarrett is a Peabody and Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker whose vérité style storytelling has documented some of the most high-profile stories of the last decade.
Yvonne Michelle Shirley
Yvonne Michelle Shirley is a filmmaker based in Newark, NJ. She is Co-Founder of The Newarkive, an arts initiative centering the archives of Newark’s Black communities. She is also a member of the collective, New Negress Film Society.
Jameka Autry
Jameka Autry is a producer, director, and 2020 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellow. Past fellowships and honors include the 2019 Sundance Creative Producing Lab Fellowship, 2017 Impact Partners Creative Producing Fellowship, and 2018 Double Exposure Investigative Film Fellowship.
Reid Davenport
Reid Davenport makes films about disability from an overtly political perspective. He was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Filmmakers Under 40” in 2020.
Jon-Sesrie Goff
Jon-Sesrie Goff is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts administrator. He has an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. He is in production for his feature-length documentary, "After Sherman."
Priscilla González Sainz
Priscilla González Sainz is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker and writer based in Southern California. Her documentary ROOM 140 was nominated for an IDA Award, and her most recent film STATUS PENDING won the IF/Then Shorts Pitch for the American West, receiving funding and distribution mentorship. The film was supported by Tribeca Film Institute and NALIP.
Edwin Martinez
Edwin Martinez is a Bronx-born filmmaker whose award-winning first feature documentary TO BE HEARD was named a New York Times critics pick and “one of the best documentaries of the year.”
