Americans for the Arts

The American South is an expansive region, replete with storytellers and rich creative practices, and yet its stories are often misrepresented on-screen and in the media, contributing to reductive stereotypes that disempower our communities.

When we look to contemporary art created by Southern artists across disciplines, we can see well beyond dominant narratives that depict a region marred by racial oppression and economic injustice.

Artists often reveal what the media doesn’t––resilient communities that value cultural heritage and embrace progressive ideals, communities connecting across differences, fighting for social justice, and espousing an increasingly intersectional view of what it means to be Southern.

In our country, power and resources—both philanthropic and commercial—tend to centralize themselves on the coasts, and this is certainly true of the ecosystem of film, as an artform heavily influenced by commercial interests.

But where does that leave filmmakers who live and work in geographic isolation from those centers of power? What about those who create independent film, virtual reality experiences, and other moving image artwork that disrupts the status quo? What about diverse artists whose voices are less often uplifted by the mainstream film industry?

What do these artists need to continue to tell bold and powerful stories, stories that have the potential to imagine new possibilities for a Southern identity––stories that have the power to reshape the nation’s understanding of our region, and to change how Southerners see ourselves?

These are some of the questions the New Orleans Film Society endeavored to collectively answer when we convened 47 national, regional, and local media stakeholders at the Greater New Orleans Foundation during the New Orleans Film Festival last October, and when we disseminated a post-event survey that would include the voices of 100+ filmmakers from 12 Southern states. Click here to read the full report from the South Summit.

What did we learn?

Independent filmmakers articulated with passion how living and working in the South ignites their creativity; these artists described being compelled to tell place-based stories and a deep desire to author their own cultural identities. They spoke of how often Southern voices are misrepresented, underrepresented, and reductively stereotyped.

Many respondents mentioned feeling personally driven to incite social change through their work by addressing the complex issues facing Southern communities through narratives about race and economic justice, health, and a deeply flawed criminal justice system. A common refrain was that stories about disenfranchised communities in the South are often told by outsiders, rather than by Southerners, or by filmmakers who are not directly affected by the issues a film seeks to address––a practice the documentary world refers to as “extractive storytelling.”

Beyond funding, which is the dominant challenge for Southern filmmakers and the Southern-based organizations that serve them, we learned that filmmakers highly value coalition-building and networking opportunities, and hunger for access to gatekeepers, more exhibition and distribution opportunities for their work, and a deeper bench of producers.

We also mapped the programs offered nationally and across the region, whether created specifically for––or simply inclusive of––Southern filmmakers. Financial resources for filmmakers primarily flow through organizations with a national scope of service, whose gatekeepers are not located in the South, while organizations based in the South reported feeling bootstrapped as they provided services like access to professional development workshops, seminars and networking opportunities, and community connectivity; and attempted to raise funds for regionally specific grantmaking.

What comes next?

New Orleans Film Society and other peer organizations that participated in the South Summit are currently developing funding proposals to address the specific needs Southern filmmakers articulated through the 2018 South Summit Report.

In addition to informing how the New Orleans Film Society will serve filmmakers going forward through the New Orleans Film Festival, our industry exchange, pitch program, and filmmaker professional development labs, we hope the South Summit Report will help create a broader understanding of the artists who live and work in our region. We are working diligently to introduce the report to funders, as well as support from artists and social justice-focused organizations that could resource and partner with Southern filmmakers to produce more complex, impactful stories about the contemporary South.

New Orleans Film Society will host a continuation of the South Summit in New Orleans in October 2019, and we would be enthusiastic to see Southern organizations to host similar events and publicly share their learnings. If your organization is considering hosting your own version of the South Summit, or a similar convening, we found the National Endowment For the Arts’ Convening Toolkit: Documentary Career Sustainability was a helpful resource during the planning process.