Color Congress (Project Elev8te Doc) Co-Executive Director Sonya Childress (Shara Driver)

Color Congress is an ecosystem-builder that is committed to organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands. We are a membership organization that includes film festivals, artist support and narrative change entities, micro cinemas, filmmaker collectives, and public media. We serve this ecosystem by supporting, resourcing, connecting, and championing these organizations to build their collective power. Our vision is to actualize a reimagined documentary landscape toward one that strengthens people of color visibility, voice, and power, laying the groundwork for a future of the field that is a more powerful force for social change.Elev8Docs is a Color Congress learning initiative supporting research for over two dozen nonfiction films by directors of color, all nominated by our member organizations. This initiative exclusively focused on Color Congress member-supported films and sought to address Color Congress members’ concerns about the film distribution crisis. Designed as a series of eight experiments, Elev8Docs focused on distribution barriers that filmmakers of color face, from a lack of cultural competency among mainstream marketing and PR agencies to a lack of data on diverse audience tastes and nonfiction consumption habits. The initiative offered a unique opportunity to advance solutions that help films reach their intended audiences and to lay the foundation for an effective distribution infrastructure in a changing landscape.