Juneteenth Special Edition
What to watch over the long weekend, plus funding and job opportunities
Happy Juneteenth, friends.
Welcome to our holiday edition, with film recs for the long weekend as well as funding and job opportunities to keep you busy. A few Juneteenth-inspired films to get you started:
Summer of Soul (2021). Questlove’s crowd-pleasing archival concert film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival… features stunning, irresistible footage of Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, and an entire roll call of 20th-century Black jazz, pop, blues, and rock greats” (The Ringer).
Miss Juneteenth (2020). “A warmhearted and pain-streaked melodrama that's deeply anchored in observation and experience” (The New Yorker).
Daughters of the Dust (1991). “An Atlanta-based artist making her long-worked-for feature debut, [Julie] Dash is a filmmaker of startling originality and delicacy. Her film is poetry in motion, part dream-memory, part tattered family album” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
We’ll be back with the full newsletter next week.
What to Watch This Weekend
Creators with refreshing takes
Rose of Nevada. “The film seals its one-man-band creator [Mark Jenkin] as a distinctive, now eminently recognizable arthouse voice” (Variety).
Maddie’s Secret. “[John] Early’s feature debut is a refreshing send-up of TV and movie tropes that embraces sentimentality with a cheeky sense of humor” (AV Club).
Tales with a Twist
Unidentified. “Haifaa al-Mansour’s clever Saudi murder mystery offers a scathing critique of female oppression, with a twist” (THR).
Leviticus. “For the majority of the movie, you’re led to believe you’ve been watching a horror film with a love story burbling underneath it. By the time you get to the final act, you come to realize that its actually the reverse” (Rolling Stone).
Beloved IP
Toy Story 5. “Breezy and predictable, with some energizing chases and a few heart-tugging scenes. But even as a middling Toy Story movie, it remains among the top animated films of the genre” (SF Chronicle).
Girls Like Girls. “The pop star Hayley Kiyoko turns her hit single and best-selling book into a coming-of-age romance” (NYT).
Closing Soon: Summer Deadlines
Tribeca Through Her Lens (6/21 deadline)
Film Independent Fast Track Extended Deadline (6/22 deadline)
Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest (6/29 extended deadline)
Tubi x Black List Horror Initiative (6/30 deadline)
Queer Art Illuminations Grant (7/2 deadline)
AMPAS Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting (7/6 deadline)
Sundance Doc Fund (7/15 deadline)
Project Involve 2027 (7/27 extended deadline)
New Orleans South Pitch (7/31 deadline)
Select Jobs/Gigs Roundup
Head of Marketing & Communications, Motion Picture & Television Fund
Head of TikTok, Mr. Beast
Director, Creative Video - Football, UC Berkeley
Head of Content and Audience Engagement, Peacemaker Studio
VP, Rotten Tomatoes (Content & Platform), Versant Media
Editorial Director, A+E Global Media
Supervising Senior Producer, Newscast, National Public Radio
TV Development Executive, Alcon Entertainment, LLC
Sr Manager Integrated Media Strategy, Universal Studios Hollywood
End Credits: Portrait Post of the Week
Until next week. See you on the Portrait app.