Education

In 2015, The Filmmaker Fund put its support behind the prestigious UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as an incubator for the next generation of high-impact documentary makers and multimedia producers. The Fund provides direct financial backing to students through the Fine Cut Fund and the Marlon T. Riggs Fellowship in Documentary Filmmaking, and is planning to expand this support to include off-site workshops and retreats.

The Fine Cut Fund is overseen by Professor Orlando Bagwell, award-winning filmmaker and director of the J-School’s Documentary Program, which is widely considered one of the strongest and most important visual journalism programs in the country. The Fund makes direct grants to students to defray the hard costs of documentary production—travel and shooting expenses, and outlays for equipment and research.

The Marlon T. Riggs Fellowship Fund, the first endowment in the School’s history dedicated to supporting documentary filmmakers, awards an annual tuition grant to the School’s most promising documentary student.

Both of these initiatives serve an immediate need for direct funding to ensure the continued vitality of journalism in the public interest—whatever the visual medium and whatever the topic of importance, from social justice to safeguarding the environment to protecting the most vulnerable in our society. The goal is to create a powerful catalyst for documentary and multimedia production at Berkeley for years to come.