Firelight Media & Firelight Films

Firelight Media is a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color. Join us in celebrating 25 years in 2025! -- ABOUT FIRELIGHT MEDIA Documentary storytelling is among the most powerful tools for artistic expression and advancing social justice. For more than a century, people of color have harnessed the power of image-making to showcase and celebrate our full humanity and to cultivate communities of action. This collective work has created new visual languages, moved the arc of history toward justice, inspired audiences, and, ultimately, created a new canon of BIPOC cinema. We see our work as a continuation of this legacy. Filmmakers of color continue to build creative communities that advance the art of documentary. Yet, in the larger documentary field, BIPOC filmmakers still struggle to find artistic and financial resources to tell their stories. Firelight Media meets this challenge by supporting, resourcing, and advocating on behalf of filmmakers of color. -- OUR MISSION Firelight Media’s mission is to support the creation, distribution, and impact of documentary media by and about communities of color in all our vibrance and complexity. By providing filmmakers mentorship, funding, and creative development, we seek to advance the art of nonfiction storytelling to realize a more just and beautiful world. -- Firelight Films is a documentary production company co-founded by award-winning filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith. Firelight Films documentaries have garnered multiple Primetime Emmys, Peabodys, and Sundance awards. Among them, 'Sound of the Police,' for Hulu; the Oscar-nominated 'Attica, 'for Showtime; and 'Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool' and 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' for PBS. Firelight Films also develops strategies, partnerships, and materials to reach and engage diverse audiences around the world and maximize the impact of documentary films.