Six of documentary’s most promising emerging film producers to participate in a yearlong workshop series with Liz Garbus, Morgan Spurlock, Thom Powers, Stanley Nelson, Dan Cogan, Amy Ziering, Julie Goldman, Caroline Libresco and other industry luminaries

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Impact Partners announced today the recipients of the Emerging Documentary Producers Fellowship, which was created to nurture the underappreciated role of documentary producing. The fellows will be recognized at the DOC NYC panel Supporting the Documentary Producer – Ask an Expert on Monday, November 16 from 3:30-4:40pm at Bowtie Chelsea Cinemas, 260 West 23 St., in New York. At the panel, the Impact Partners Emerging Producers Fellowship Mentors from the program will dispense their best advice on the dark arts of producing. Panel participants include Dan Coganand Jenny Raskin of Impact Partners, plus filmmakers Liz Garbus, Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady, Amy Hobby and attorneyVictoria Cook. 

The six recipients of the inaugural year fellowships are: 

• Fazeelat Aslam – Nominated by Jimmy Goldblum
• Iyabo Boyd – Nominated by Malika Zouhali-Worrall
• Adrienne Collatos – Nominated by Amy Hobby
• Katia Maguire – Nominated by Bernardo Ruiz
• Kellen Quinn – Nominated by Dan Janvey
• Pamela Ryan – Nominated by Julie Goldman, Ross Kauffman, Graham Leader, Jason Orans and Lois Vossen

The 2015-2016 Impact Partners fellows will participate in 10 in-depth workshops beginning in December and continuing through Fall 2016. Each fellow will be awarded a $2,500 stipend.  Impact Partners received over 130 nominations in its first annual call for submissions. 

Dan Cogan, Executive Director of Impact Partners, says “We were incredibly impressed by the caliber of producers that applied to our Emerging Documentary Producers Fellowship in its first year. The candidate pool was extremely talented, passionate, and hungry to learn more about the often unrecognized art of documentary film producing. We are excited to offer mentorship and support to this inaugural group of fellows, and add our vote of confidence to their promising careers as producers.” 

Thom Powers, Artistic Director of DOC NYC, says, “DOC NYC is extremely proud to participate in this new initiative. We hope it encourages more efforts to foster talent and takes advantage of the deep talent pool of guests at DOC NYC PRO events.” 

Guest luminaries who are confirmed to participate in the 2015-2016 year of fellowship workshops include: Victoria Cook (Page One: Inside the New York Times, The Reluctant Fundamentalist), Geralyn Dreyfous (Born into Brothels, The Square), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, Detropia), Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola, USA, What Happened, Miss Simone?),Howard Gertler (How to Survive a Plague, Do I Sound Gay?), Julie Goldman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Buck), Amy Hobby(What Happened, Miss Simone?, Love, Marilyn), Director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute Tabitha Jackson, Alexandra Johnes (The Square, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God), Sundance Film Festival Documentary Programmer Caroline Libresco (American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs), Stanley Nelson(Freedom Riders, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution), DOC NYC Artistic Director and Toronto Film Festival Programmer Thom Powers, Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me,  CNN's Morgan Spurlock Inside Man), and Amy Ziering, (The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground). The workshops will be moderated by Impact Partners Executive Director Dan Cogan (How to Survive a Plague, Hell and Back Again, The Queen of Versailles). 

In conjunction with the Emerging Documentary Producers Fellowship, Impact Partners is launching a Documentary Producers Salon where experienced documentary producers will meet as a community throughout the year for peer networking, mentorship, and collaboration. Selected Salon members will be announced in the next month. 

Jenny Raskin, VP of Development and Filmmaker Relations at Impact Partners says, “We were blown away by the strength of applicants who applied for the Documentary Producing Fellowship and become acutely aware that there's a strong desire for community and mentorship even among more experienced producers. In addition to the Fellowship, we have highlighted 15 producers from the Fellowship applicant pool to participate in our inaugural Documentary Producers Salon. We keep hearing from producers that they’re hungry for more community and support, and Impact Partners is excited to be able to support both emerging and experienced producers in the documentary world.” 

Impact Partners is a leading financier and executive producer of documentary films with credits including The Cove, How to Survive a Plague, Hell and Back Again, The Hunting Ground, The Queen of Versailles and many others. DOC NYC is the largest U.S. documentary film festival.

With the Emerging Documentary Producers Fellowship, Impact Partners celebrates the independent documentary producer and aims to foster emerging producing talent through a year-long series of workshops with some of the most prominent luminaries in the field of documentary film. The Impact Partners Documentary Producers Fellows will participate in ten development workshops to be held in New York City. Each session will explore a different aspect of film production facing young producers today, including film finance, festival strategy, marketing and distribution deal making, legal workshops and other critical topics. During each session, luminaries will work closely with each fellow to choose topics and issues with immediate relevancy to their current work, offering hands-on advice, strategies and best practices. 

For the inaugural 2015 program, six emerging producers have been selected.  Candidates were nominated by current or former colleagues. Nominations were accepted from directors, producers, editors and other key crew members who have worked directly with the candidates on a previous or current film.

For more information on the fellowship, please visit:

impactpartnersfilm.com/fellowship