The Better Angels Lavine Fellowship - For U.S. History Documentary Filmmakers

The Better Angels Lavine Fellowship - For U.S. History Documentary Filmmakers is sponsored by Better Angels Society. This opportunity supports mission-aligned projects and measurable outcomes.

Better Angels Lavine Fellowship - The Better Angels Society Better Angels Lavine Fellowship Better Angels 2026-08-25T10:31:56-06:00 2025 Better Angels Lavine Fellows at the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film Awards Ceremony Established in 2021, The Better Angels Lavine Fellowship supports compelling documentaries that represent the full range of U.S. history and are well-positioned to benefit from customized membership.

The fellowship creates a community where filmmakers gain expertise from seasoned industry leaders and share skills to collectively deepen their craft. The Fellowship is focused on feature-length projects in post-production and offers focused workshops and mentorship that support their completion and distribution.

Each selected film receives a $5,000 prize, and filmmakers meet in a virtual cohort setting over the course of several months to advance their projects to the next stage. The Better Angels Lavine Fellowship is made possible by The Better Angels Society and a generous gift from Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine , and is a companion program of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film .

Fellows are invited to attend the annual Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film awards ceremony, which welcomes experts from across the industry. Fellows are highly encouraged to submit to this prize in future years. Past cohorts have participated in workshops focused on packaging and pitching films, archival producing, marketing and distribution, self-distribution, and the PBS programming process.

In 2025, workshop mentors included PBS Executive Sylvia Bugg , Distribution Executive Alexandra Hannibal , Distribution Advocates’ Co-founder Amy Hobby , Archival Producer Stephanie Jenkins , Producer Caroline Waterlow , and other industry experts. Participants have also worked one-on-one with editing mentors who offer targeted feedback on rough and fine cuts of their films.

In 2025, editing mentors included Salimah El-Amin ( The Vietnam War) , Amy Foote (Fauci) , Flavia de Souza (Eyes on the Prize II) and Tyler Walk (Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus) .

Your film must focus on an American historical subject, issue, or person within a time frame occurring at least twenty years prior to submission (prior to 2006) and must present a variety of perspectives grounded in extensive and thorough research. The majority of the film must be historically focused to qualify.

We invite submissions employing a broad range of storytelling devices and archival materials, which should be integral to the story. Applicants should submit a 20-minute continuous sample; the sample can be from a rough or fine cut of the feature-length project. Short films are ineligible.

Submissions must follow journalistic standards and consider multiple perspectives. Industrial, promotional, “advertorial”, advocacy, and instructional films are ineligible. No product placement or paid messaging is permitted.

If a submission uses AI, the project must identify when and where AI is used and adhere to the Archival Producers Alliance’s Best Practices for Use of Generative AI . A film previously submitted to the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film can be submitted to the Fellowship if it was not previously awarded. Apply to the Better Angels Lavine Fellowship.

“The publicity and the fellowship mentors really helped the visibility of our project, which elevated the prestige, and the archival mentors gave us great guidance on this critical aspect. ” — J. M.

Harper, Soul Patrol , 2026 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection “Being in the same Zoom room as many of these folks was really outstanding – even just being able to have direct access and the thumbs up to reach out to them directly is indescribably invaluable. It was heartening to understand from these experts that we’re on the right track and much of what we’re already in process on is what they would advise.

” — Jillian Schultz, You Should Never Blink “Diamond Diplomacy ’s distribution has been given a big boost by the mentorship, the funding, the new relationships, and the stature of being an honored Better Angels Lavine Fellow…Thank you also for recognizing the importance of history!

” — Yuriko Gamo Romer, Diamond Diplomacy “We cannot express how heartening it is to receive this vote of confidence in the film and support towards bringing it to the finish line…We are deeply honored to have been selected & very much looking forward to being part of the fellowship community!

” -Jillian Schultz, You Should Never Blink Brothers in Blood is an in-depth chronicle of the Black experience at home and abroad during and after the Vietnam War, told by those who lived it. Directed by Yuriko Gamo Romer Diamond Diplomacy explores the long and complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan through the shared love of baseball, revealing a moving diplomatic history that spans generations.

Directed by Christine Felton Filmed over 8 years, Location, Location chronicles an epic struggle to save a public housing project and historic Black neighborhood, capturing a pivotal moment in the transformation of public housing and inner city America. After 50 years of silence, Vietnam’s first Black special operations team reunites to fulfill their most crucial mission: bearing witness to history.

Their story illuminates a pivotal chapter in America’s past while inviting essential dialogue about service, sacrifice, and our collective national memory. Directed by Taylor Hosking West Side Familia unearths the buried history of a Puerto Rican biker club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Through rich archival footage and firsthand accounts, the film explores themes of gentrification, community defense, and cultural pride.

Directed by Jillian Schultz and Leah Thompson Sister Corita Kent, the “pop art nun,” dazzled 1960s America with her joyful art and radical teachings, becoming a counterculture icon who challenged the art world and the Catholic church alike.

Directed by Mimi Chakarova On January 8, 1963, officials in Alameda County, California, began hearings to discuss the forced removal of Russell City, an unincorporated area comprised of predominantly Black and Latino residents. Soon after, authorities wiped out the entire community with bulldozers and rezoned the 200 acres for industrial use.

Photo: Hayward Area Historical Society Collection DORY PREVIN: ON MY WAY TO WHERE Directed by Julia Greenberg and Dianna Dilworth A documentary about Dory Previn, an MGM lyricist and influential 1970s cult singer-songwriter who famously goes public about her schizophrenia diagnosis, ultimately accepting her voices and anticipating a modern-day neurodiversity movement.

Directed by Robert Carpenter Lacrosse is an ancient Indigenous pastime, played on North American shores long before the first settlers arrived. In the late 1800s, colonists appropriated the game and turned it into modern lacrosse, which has become a major contemporary sport.

Second Growth tells the story of the Indigenous lacrosse journey to regain agency in modern lacrosse and use the modern platform as the foundation of a larger cultural movement.

Directed by Marlene McCurtis Wednesdays in Mississippi tells the story of an all-women civil rights program whose Black and white women teams from Northern cities navigated high personal risk to contribute vital strategic presence on the ground in dangerous Mississippi during Freedom Summer and throughout the 60s, seeding a legacy for social change.

Directed by Jeffrey Morgan When a black teenager is shot and killed attending a party in Jay, Florida, the town’s racist past becomes its present and leads to the uncovering of a shockingly similar murder in 1922 that changed the community forever. Directed by Ben DiGiacomo The story of New York City’s dancehall culture told by its legendary participants, from early pioneers to present day megastars Shaggy and Sean Paul.

Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall creates a coherent account of dancehall as a New York immigrant evolution of shared Jamaican identity and cultural pride. Directed by Patrick Longstreth In 1971, one of the worst industrial tragedies in U.S. history shook rural Southeast Georgia. The victims were predominantly Black women, manufacturing trip flares for the Vietnam War.

Over 50 years later, survivors and first responders shed new light on the bravery and sacrifice of that day, and a grassroots campaign seeks to award the victims with the Congressional Gold Medal. Mile-high hair. Synthesized music.

Underground parties. The “Vietnamese new wave” scene of 1980s California was the catalyst to healing a generation of refugees in limbo. NEW WAVE is the coming-of-age story about trailblazers who pioneered a raucous music scene and inspired their community to rebuild in the wake of war.

PHOTOGRAPHIC JUSTICE: THE CORKY LEE STORY Directed by Jennifer Takaki Using his camera as a “weapon against injustice,” Chinese American photographer Corky Lee brought art and politics together through decades of documentation of the Asian American experience. From Lunar New Year to street protests, Pakistani Independence Day to Diwali, Lee’s photographs empowered generations of AAPI pride.

Filmmaker Jennifer Takaki’s unprecedented access reveals the triumphs and tragedies of the man behind the camera. Directed by Robert Carpenter Lacrosse is an ancient, Indigenous pastime, played on North American shores long before the first settlers arrived. In the late 1800s, colonists appropriated the game and turned it into modern lacrosse, which has become a major contemporary sport.

Second Growth tells the story of the Indigenous lacrosse journey to regain agency in modern lacrosse and use the modern platform as the foundation of a larger cultural movement. Three Filipino-American veterans trace their paths from war to erasure by the U.S. Government, marching from an obscured history to the Federal courts, right up to the steps of Congress in search of promises denied.

BUFFALO SOLDIERS: FIGHTING ON THE TWO FRONTS This film recounts the history of Black men seeking better lives in the U.S. Army after the Civil War. Their service during the Western expansion and ensuing wars created a laudatory yet complex legacy as they battled wars on two fronts –– the enemy and the racism of the country they served.

Directed by Margo Guernsey When eleven women became Episcopal priests against the rules in 1974, they challenged two thousand years of patriarchal Christianity. The media catches on, and they find themselves leading a movement. In a largely archival journey, with parallels to today, we meet the women who create a blueprint for institutional change.

On the High Plains of the US a secret bomb plot, led by militant white supremacists, threatens a small thriving town in Kansas, sustained for decades by immigration from around the world. As we follow the lives of this pluralistic success story, the menacing conspiracy is ultimately foiled by FBI.

Animated courtroom testimony interwoven with inspiring stories of survival and unity, Garden City is a vivid history of life in America during one of its most challenging times.

Directed by John Carstarphen Award-winning film director John Carstarphen’s The Last Philadelphia explores racial violence, the MOVE bombings and the power of the Black family in this dramatic memoir about the Eastwick neighborhood in Southwest Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s.

Told primarily through the POV, experiences and voices of Black mothers, The Last Philadelphia shows us that Black History is everyone’s history, and that ultimately, one American’s story is every American’s story.

A TASTE OF HEAVEN: THE ECSTATIC SONG & GOSPEL OF MAESTRO RAYMOND ANTHONY MYLES This film follows Raymond from the everyday violence of the housing projects in New Orleans; to the public schools where he steered countless students away from gangs and drugs; to the Southern churches where he mesmerized the faithful; to the Telluride Bluegrass and Newport Folk festivals where he made new, wonderstruck fans — until his shocking murder, in 1998, on the cusp of music stardom, in the projects he could not leave behind.

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA Directed by Joy Davenport Mississippi sharecropper-turned-civil-rights-activist, Fannie Lou Hamer, is known for her powerful speeches, soul-stirring songs and impassioned pleas for equal rights. In this film, she tells her own story – in her own words – through archival audio footage & rarely seen television appearances recorded throughout her political and humanitarian career.

Directed by Diallo Javonne French From the evolution of jazz in the 1930’s, to present day popular music. This film shows Kansas City’s importance to American music. Featuring interviews with Kansas City natives: Bobby Watson, Janelle Monáe and Tech N9ne.

With segments on area legends like Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, and others. Directed by Peter von Puttkamer Patti Henley & Brenda Lee Eager are two talented singers from the golden age of rock/soul and R&B. Soul Sisters is about their lives: first working for Martin Luther King/Jesse Jackson’s Operation Breadbasket.

They become the “Voice of the Movement”. Now they bring powerful messages about Black History to schoolchildren. HOME FROM SCHOOL: THE CHILDREN OF CARLISLE In 2017, a delegation of Northern Arapaho tribal members travels from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to retrieve remains of three children who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial school in the 1880s.

It’s a journey into the troubled history of Indian boarding schools, and a quest to heal generational wounds. INVISIBLE WARRIORS: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN WORLD WAR II Directed by Gregory S. Cooke During World War II, 600,000 African American “Rosie the Riveters” work in industry and government for the first time.

These “Greatest Generation” heroines overcome racism and sexism to create employment opportunities for future generations of Black women. There was an error trying to send your message. Please try again later.

The Better Angels Society is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. EIN: 45-4587107