Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund
A New Film Fund for Black Filmmakers – Beyond Trauma, Toward Freedom
Mainstream narratives about Black life are overwhelmingly centered around trauma, struggle, and survival. These stories are important, but they’re not the only stories.
What’s missing are the full-spectrum human experiences: joy, imagination, intimacy, absurdity, everyday identity, and intersectional complexity.
Color of Sound’s Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund exists to correct that imbalance by supporting Black filmmakers to tell new kinds of stories—ones that don’t have to begin with a slave spiritual or end in violence. We aim to fuel creativity, not just commerce; liberation, not just explanation.
Most emerging Black filmmakers…
Lack the financial means to dedicate time to filmmaking and are expected to self-fund or pay to access mentorship or film training programs. Most must default to trauma-centered narratives in order to attract funding and don’t have equitable access to technical equipment or emotional support to create sustainably. Many are locked out of distribution ecosystems unless they replicate commercially viable stereotypes.
The Solution: A Sanctuary for Storytelling
We are building a fully resourced ecosystem that gives Black filmmakers the space, support, and structure to create without compromising vision or dignity.
On site with Aaron Johnson’s “Dark and Tender: The Big Island”, captured by Aliko Weste.
Key Features of the Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund
-
Funds go toward both living stipends and production costs, removing the false choice between survival and storytelling.
-
Each filmmaker is paired with mentors (including Grand Strategy & Color of Sound) who help manage the budget, timeline, and creative execution—like a true producer.
-
Through strategic partnerships with brands, filmmakers will receive professional-grade gear at no cost.
-
Drawing on Grand Strategy’s Inclusive Stages program, filmmakers are supported to lead psychologically safe, emotionally intelligent productions.
-
Films will be showcased at festivals including Seattle, Brixton, XLFest and BUFF, with built-in exposure to industry partners.
-
This model has been tested with UK filmmakers, successfully taking ideas to finished shorts with budgets of £10,000+.
Why Now?
AI is rapidly redefining creativity. In an always-on digital world, storytelling becomes the last sanctuary—a space for disconnection, introspection, and human reconnection. We will need stories that slow us down, change our minds, and open our hearts.
But stories are only as expansive as the people allowed to tell them. If we want a future where Black voices are co-architects—not footnotes—we must fund the full range of Black experience, not just its pain. We must fund joy, weirdness, tenderness, experimentation.
The Vision for the Fund in 2026–2027
In 2026-2027, the Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund would support up to 10 filmmakers provided with full production support and coaching. It would prepare filmmakers for screenings at major film festivals, and include partnerships with brand sponsors, and equipment and marketing support. It could reach broader audiences through digital and physical showcases.
Storytellers
Emerging Black Filmmaker Fund prospective applicants on why the funds and support would help them in their filmmaking and film career.
The Emerging Black Filmmakers Fund is just a film fund. It’s a cultural intervention, an emotional innovation, and a new blueprint for what it means to invest in Black creativity with care and vision.
We’re not just funding films. We’re funding freedom, futures, and the power to imagine beyond what has always been.
For more information, please email Ben Wilson at ben@colorofsound.org.