Filmmaker Tools

Equity Tools

Here are some useful resources for anyone seeking to learn more about how to make films from the standpoint of doing anti-oppression work, how to adhere to the principles of “Not about us, without us” and guidance on working with / about / for communities and creators that have historically been misrepresented / under represented on screen and among production teams.

ON-SCREEN PROTOCOLS & PATHWAYS: A MEDIA PRODUCTION GUIDE TO WORKING WITH FIRST NATIONS, MÉTIS AND INUIT COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, CONCEPTS AND STORIES

Commissioned by imagineNATIVE and prepared by Marcia Nickerson, this highly-anticipated guide provides cultural principles, key findings from a national consultation process, and best practices for filmmakers, production companies, and funders when depicting Indigenous content on screen, and how communities can be collaborative partners.

Building Trust and Accountability: Report on Eligibility in the Indigenous Screen Sector

Created by the Indigenous Screen Office, APTN, and Archipel Research and Consulting Inc.

“As organizations that uphold the sovereignty of First Nations, Inuit and Métis, we recognize that determinations of citizenship are the purview of those Nations, and that identity is distinct from citizenship. This report will help guide our organizations in determining eligibility for our programs in a way that includes citizenship as well as notions of belonging and kinship that exist within our Nations, to ensure we are as inclusive of our relations as possible, while also ensuring our funding is directed appropriately.”

DISCLOSURE’s toolkit for industry professionals

DISCLOSURE’s toolkit offers film industry executives and creatives insight into trans-inclusive storytelling. We created the DISCLOSURE toolkits to help you engage in conversations that connect family, friends, classmates, colleagues, and communities, with powerful clips from the film available to everyone. We hope you will use DISCLOSURE to help bring together your communities in the struggle against all hate speech and violence.

GLAAD Transform Hollywood Guide

This guide, created by GLAAD and 5050by2020.com, is an invitation to change the way trans people are portrayed in media and culture. GLAAD believes that when trans people are empowered to help culture makers tell our authentic stories, it will improve how trans people are treated in the real world. Those negative statistics above will become a part of our history, not our present. Let’s work together to create a beautiful, diverse, and inclusive world in which trans people are fully accepted as equal human beings.

HOW TO BE A TRANS ALLY, BY PFLAG

This resource was created by PFLAG to help people understand why their voices are critical to achieving equality, whether they are a straight ally, or a member of the LGB community looking to be part of the movement for trans inclusion.

THE SUNDANCE INSTITUTE’S Inclusion Resource Map

In 2015, Women at Sundance and Women In Film LA launched the Women’s Resource Map, a user-friendly online database compiling the programs, events, workshops, and services available to U.S.-based women filmmakers. In 2019, they updated the map to include resources for artists from a broader array of underrepresented communities, currently including artists who identify as women, people of color, LGBTQ+, trans and nonbinary, and artists with disabilities.

Lisa Valencia-Svensson’s 2019 Hot Docs keynote

Diversity, inclusion, representation—what do they really mean? On the heels of the international premiere of Always in Season, producer Lisa Valencia-Svensson of Multitude Films explores why the question, “Who is telling whose story to whom, and why?” should be at the centre of the making of every documentary film.

Harvard Business Review article: How to be a better ally

The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements have forced people in positions of power to realize they must personally step up to make organizations more fair and inclusive. 

INDIGENOUS AND RACIALIZED PRODUCER TRAINING INITIATIVE, by Kerry Swanson

Research commissioned by the DOC Institute with the objective of providing background information and context for the development of training initiatives for Indigenous and racialized producers.

A Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility: Changing the Narrative of Disability in Documentary Film

This Toolkit for Inclusion & Accessibility has been created by FWD-Doc in association with Doc Society and supported by Netflix, featuring a case study about Crip Camp (2020) and with a view to best practice, not just compliance.

ELIMIN8HATE STYLE GUIDE: REPORTING ON ASIAN CANADIAN COMMUNITIES

This style guide is a community response to decades of unrepresentative media coverage of the Asian-Canadian community — with contributions from racialized journalists across the country — that outlines best practices when reporting on Asian Canadians and peoples of Asian heritage. Journalists, broadcasters, and media workers have the responsibility to understand and examine what they are covering, what is not being covered, how they are covering these stories, and why. This living document sets out best practices that journalists can follow to ensure coverage of racialized communities is respectful and representative.

THE BLUEPRINT FOR MUSLIM INCLUSION: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FILM INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS

A broad coalition of filmmakers, academics, community organizers, culture change strategists, actors, and producers came together to build a blueprint for inclusion that can fundamentally change the way Muslims are portrayed on screen, thereby influencing the way Muslims are perceived in their real lives. The coalition believes this blueprint can pave the way for a more inclusive and safer society for all, where diverse and rich life experiences are honored on and off the screen.

Framework for Values, Ethics, and Accountability in Nonfiction Filmmaking

The Documentary Accountability Working Group considers values, guiding principles and ethics that inform the practices of filmmakers, and shape their relationship to the story, the participants, the audience, funders and other stakeholders. The working group grew organically out of a common series of questions around the future of documentary filmmaking, and the exponential growth of the documentary film industry. As the industry and the world navigate social constructs that could mitigate the documentary ecosystem, do filmmakers need a foundational set of best practices? Would industry-wide agreement on best practices help non-fiction storytellers work in ways they and their peers understand as responsible and ethical? The working group has elected to lead a discovery process, in order to source guiding principles that can support equitable and just filmmaking. An essential pillar of this work is to conduct open dialogues with filmmakers, funders, festivals and foundations who make up the documentary film system.