Awarded Grants

The 2020 film grant will support "Life Beyond Life," a collaborative short hybrid film about women's re-entry experiences. After successfully fighting to have their juvenile life sentences cut short, four women in Philadelphia use a collaborative film process to visualize their experiences, struggles, and dreams as they face a new world upon re-entry. Each woman was sentenced to life in prison as juveniles and collectively they served over 140 years. Life Beyond Life will be an intimate conversation between resilient, hopeful women who have much to share with their sisters still incarcerated and the outside world.

This one-year grant will support "Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa." The short documentary features counselors from the Women's Medical Fund responding to phone calls from women seeking help. The film explores the economic stigmas and legislation that determines access to abortion in the U.S.

Providing matching dollars to seven local newsrooms—Hidden City Philadelphia, Next City, PA Post, Philadelphia Public School Notebook, Spotlight PA, Tarbell, WHYY, PBS 39 / WLVT—in support of this year-end giving campaign.

The 2020 film grant will support "Wisdom Gone Wild." The personal feature-length documentary follows a sixteen-year caregiving journey into dementia for Rose Noda, a Japanese-American woman and her filmmaker-daughter Rea. The film follows a non-linear structure going between hospice, early onset, and mid-term dementia; mirroring Rose's own erratic travels through time.

For BlackStar Film Festival general operating support.

This one-year grant will support "Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa." The short documentary features counselors from the Women's Medical Fund responding to phone calls from women seeking help. The film explores the economic stigmas and legislation that determines access to abortion in the U.S.

To present an eight-week retrospective of the eight seasons of Philadelphia Stories, short films by local filmmakers commissioned and broadcast by the former WYBE television station (IPMF's predecessor).

To support Votebeat, a pop-up nonprofit newsroom covering local election administration and voting in eight states, created by Chalkbeat.

To lead research into how recent protests have changed national narratives and journalistic practices with respect to coverage of police brutality and criminal justice.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a five month pilot for Black and Brown youth using video, feature stories and podcasts to document and archive youth voices and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and the social uprisings in response to racist injustice and persistent state-sanctioned violence.