Better Angels Lavine Fellowship - The Better Angels Society

THE LAVINE FELLOWSHIP

Established in 2021, The Better Angels Lavine Fellowship is made possible by The Better Angels Society and a generous gift from Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine. Each year, five promising films that tell underrepresented stories about American history are selected from submissions to the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Working with The Better Angels Society, the Fellows select the type of mentorship, guidance, and advice they need to advance their project and seek distribution. In the past, the Fellowship has focused on marketing and distribution, archival materials, and the PBS programming process.

All applicants to the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film will be considered automatically for the Fellowship. No additional application materials are necessary.

2024 Lavine Fellow Films

THE APOLOGY

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.

SECOND GROWTH

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.

WEDNESDAYS IN MISSISSIPPI

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.

WELCOME TO JAY

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.

2023 Lavine Fellow Films

BAD LIKE BROOKLYN DANCEHALL

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.

THE DAY THAT SHOOK GEORGIA

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.

NEW WAVE

Directed by Elizabeth Ai

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.

SECOND GROWTH

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.

2022 Lavine Fellow Films

A LONG MARCH

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.

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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.

THE PHILADELPHIA ELEVEN

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.

GARDEN CITY KANSAS

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.

THE LAST PHILADELPHIA

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.

2021 Lavine Fellow Films

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA

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.

KANSAS CITY DREAMIN’

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.

SOUL SISTERS

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

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.