Netflix’s IllumiNative Producer Show Announces Its Inaugural Cohort

The Illuminated Producers Program, a partnership between the Racial and Social Justice Organization and Netflix, has found its first group.

The eight residents, out of seven originally planned, will each receive a $25,000 grant to develop their projects during the year-long trail program, which was first announced in December. The producers, selected from hundreds of candidates, are all mediocre from the start, but committed to a producer’s career.

For a long time, Hollywood was complicit in the institutional elimination of the local population. “We started this program to combat the lack of historic opportunity and investment in local storytellers and support the next generation of indigenous producers,” said Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of Illuminative, in a statement. “We look forward to a dynamic and collaborative show and thank our partners at Netflix for helping us nurture indigenous creativity with the resources and tools to advance their careers in the entertainment industry.”

As part of Netflix’s $100 million five-year fund for Creative Equity to support historically excluded people in on-camera roles, the Illuminative program offers its producers monthly seminars, mentorship and feedback, and networking opportunities with industry leaders.

“The Producers Program gives us the opportunity to change the trajectory of the entertainment industry, which has long discarded native stories,” said Leah Salgado, Illuminative’s director of impact, in a statement. “This cohort of indigenous producers demonstrates the complexity and diversity of our community, and we believe that investing in and supporting local producers will increase local representation and create new opportunities to empower indigenous storytellers and storytellers.”

The first Illuminating Producers Program Scholars and their projects are:

Ashley Browning (Cities of Pojoac), the cycle of lovers: An overly optimistic young man struggles to come to terms with the reality of his breakup, which reluctantly returns him to the family laundry room.

Taylor Hansel (Cherokee Nation), ᎭᏢ ᎢᏁᎾ (Where are we going?): A mosaic of old people’s memories of their homeland, told in Cherokee.

Princess Dajrai Johnson (Neets’aii Gwich’in) lives in the lower traditional area of ​​Tanana Dere, Alaska, and develops a narrative film in Gwich’in culture and language.

Ivan McDonald (black legs), buffalo stone: Related to Blackfeet culture and Iniskim, the stone that helps the buffalo sing, the characters must travel between the past and the present to overcome trauma.

Coyote Park (Yurok), Destination in SedonaThe feature film tells the story of two old lovers, a rough-faced trucker and a shape-shifting drifter, on a road trip from California to Arizona and their adventure that merges with the lives of their beloved stone family.

blake pickens (Chika saw), Hermit: In present-day Kentucky, a Catholic priest from Chicago investigates a legend about a hermit who preserves an ancient holy relic in the Appalachian Mountains. popular myth.

standing soldier of the bush (Oglala Lakota) RE: LOCATE: In 1962, three brothers from South Dakota, Indonesia, moved from Pine Ridge Reserve to Los Angeles in search of more opportunities than their people had ever known.

Kekama Amona (Kanaka Maoli), man and tree: The Hawaiian family comes together to ceremoniously prepare their eldest child for the transition from this world, and in the process, reaffirms their innate connection to their land and their two-way life cycle.