Firelight Media

Firelight Media Firelight Media is a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color.

Join us in celebrating 25 years of changing the story 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. For films by Stanley Nelson visit .

Meet the filmmakers and projects selected for the inaugural Firelight Fund! As our President and CEO Loira Limbal said w...
11/26/2025

Meet the filmmakers and projects selected for the inaugural Firelight Fund!

As our President and CEO Loira Limbal said when launching the Fund, “despite the uncertainties surrounding documentary funding and distribution right now, we believe these challenges should not hinder new work; rather, they should inspire artistic growth and new forms of solidarity.”

Congratulations to all!

THANK YOU to our sponsors, partners, host committee, board of directors, and supporters for making our Joyful Diversion ...
11/25/2025

THANK YOU to our sponsors, partners, host committee, board of directors, and supporters for making our Joyful Diversion 25th anniversary celebration truly unforgettable. We are forever grateful!

11/24/2025

On the red carpet at our Joyful Diversion 25th anniversary celebration at Lincoln Center, asked our President & CEO Loira Limbal () about legacy. Here’s what she had to say.

We are overjoyed to have celebrated 25 years of Firelight Media earlier this month! Grateful to our community for coming...
11/24/2025

We are overjoyed to have celebrated 25 years of Firelight Media earlier this month! Grateful to our community for coming out to support us, to the Lincoln Center for their hospitality, to our board of directors and host comittee for their dedicated service, and to our wonderful staff who made it all happen. To another 25 years of changing the story! 🥂

11/21/2025

Congratulations to the inaugural Firelight Fund recipients!

The Firelight Fund is more than a grant – it’s a statement of our deep belief in the power and importance of documentary film, art, and culture – especially when these forms of expression are under attack. Despite uncertainties surrounding documentary funding and distribution, we believe these challenges should not hinder new work; rather, they should inspire artistic growth and new forms of solidarity.

We’re thrilled to announce the 18 inaugural recipients of the Firelight Fund via an exclusive with Shadow And Act! Read ...
11/20/2025

We’re thrilled to announce the 18 inaugural recipients of the Firelight Fund via an exclusive with Shadow And Act! Read the full story via the link in our bio, and congratulations to the filmmakers!

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Amid the federal government’s elimination of all Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, Firelight Media is stepping in with a new rapid-response initiative aimed at supporting filmmakers of color.

On Nov. 17, the organization announced the inaugural recipients of the Firelight Fund, which will distribute $580,000 in unrestricted grants to 18 documentary projects by Black, Brown and Indigenous creators. The initiative was launched by Firelight Media’s new president and CEO, Loira Limbal, within her first 100 days of leadership.

“The elimination of federal support for public media has created a manufactured crisis for documentary filmmakers, especially those from Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities who have historically relied on public media and CPB-funded initiatives,” Limbal said. “We launched the Firelight Fund knowing there is an urgent need for timely, community-led storytelling about what frontline communities are experiencing right now.”

11/19/2025

We are still recovering from our 25th anniversary celebration last week, Joyful Diversion. THANK YOU to our beautiful community for showing up and showing out!

More photos and videos to come soon 💫

Huge congratulations to Brittany Shyne, who has been named the International Documentary Association's 2025 Emerging F...
11/18/2025

Huge congratulations to Brittany Shyne, who has been named the International Documentary Association's 2025 Emerging Filmmaker Award Recipient!

Brittany Shyne is an independent filmmaker and cinematographer based in Dayton, Ohio. Her debut feature, Seeds, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the esteemed U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Award.

Working in the narrative and nonfiction form, Shyne’s work seeks to depict the complexity of everyday life by examining themes such as personal histories, alienation, and cultural modernization. By utilizing observational techniques and poetic language, her films lyrically weave together frameworks of race, class, culture, and family lineage. She has worked as a cinematographer on films such as The Debutantes (Tribeca, ‘24), This Time, This Place (Tribeca, ‘21), and Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar’s Academy Award-winning film American Factory 美国 工厂(Sundance ‘19). Shyne was the recipient of the 2021 Artist Disruptor Award from the Center of Cultural Power.

IDA’s Emerging Filmmaker Award has been given annually since 2003 to a filmmaker who by virtue of their early work shows extraordinary promise in exploring the possibilities of the nonfiction art form. The recipient is selected by IDA’s Board of Directors and typically presented to a filmmaker with a notable recent first or second feature film. Previous recipients include Shiori Ito, Nanfu Wang, Alex Rivera, and Natalia Almada.

As we conclude our week of 25th Anniversary activities, we’re honored to share another reflection on our work from Docum...
11/15/2025

As we conclude our week of 25th Anniversary activities, we’re honored to share another reflection on our work from Documentary Lab alum Nelu Bhuman:

“As an immigrant transman in my middle age, Firelight’s support for my first feature documentary rekindled my hope to keep nurturing my filmmaker-voice. Six years into production, Firelight remains our only and biggest funder.

The grant may cover just 4.5% of our total budget, but your belief in my voice is incalculable, invaluable. From the depths of my weary yet stubborn heart, THANK YOU for seeing me, for believing when few did. May you forever be the great tree whose shade and roots sustain artists like us-tired, unyielding, and still reaching for the light.”

Today in , learn from our new President and CEO Loira Limbal about how Firelight Media is doubling down in the fight for...
11/12/2025

Today in , learn from our new President and CEO Loira Limbal about how Firelight Media is doubling down in the fight for documentary film ✊🏽

“I didn’t come into the role thinking that things were going to be easy or rosy,” says Limbal. “I wanted to be part of the fight for documentary film. The approach has been to double down. We hear corporations saying ‘Let’s tone this down. Let’s tone that down.’ That is not at all how I am looking at it. Documentary film is not a luxury. It is an essential part of a healthy arts and story narrative ecosystem. And our voices as filmmakers of color are essential right now.”

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

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Our Story

In 1998, Firelight Media was co-founded by director/producer Stanley Nelson, an Emmy-winning MacArthur “genius” Fellow, and Marcia Smith, an award-winning writer and visionary, who has worked extensively in philanthropy, government, arts and politics. During its first ten years, Firelight Media operated as a non-profit production company dedicated to developing social-issue films that aired nationally on PBS. Firelight won numerous awards and enjoyed great critical acclaim, with five films in the documentary competition at the Sundance Film Festival in ten years, two of which won awards (The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords won the Freedom of Expression Award in 1999; The Murder of Emmett Till won the Special Jury Prize in 2003). Firelight’s films won every major industry award, including a du-Pont Columbia Silver Baton, a Peabody, the International Documentary Association, and numerous festival awards. In addition to a focus on excellence in filmmaking, Firelight has a long history and ongoing commitment to the development and implementation of targeted outreach efforts related to its films. Firelight developed outreach campaigns around a number of past titles, including The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999), Running: The Campaign for City Council (2001), The Murder of Emmett Till (2003) and Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise (2004). Beyond Brown served as a centerpiece for reflection on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education by such organizations as the NAACP, the National Baptist Convention, and the Children’s Defense Fund since airing nationally on PBS in May 2004. Firelight’s crowning achievement is the massive card and letter-writing campaign for The Murder of Emmett Till that contributed to the recent reopening of the murder investigation. In its announcement of this historic move, the U.S. Justice Department cited the presence of witnesses unearthed in the film as a major factor in their decision. In 2008, based on tremendous success, Firelight expanded. Firelight Media shifted its focus to provide technical education and professional support to emerging documentarians, and Firelight Films, a new for-profit entity dedicated solely to producing Stanley Nelson’s films, was launched.