2025 For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator
Presented by Filmmakers Collaborative SF and Re-Present Media
The For Us, By Us Filmmaker Incubator is a seven month intensive that supports a cohort of local documentary filmmakers of different backgrounds who are telling personal stories from Bay Area communities not often seen in media.
From March-September 2025, the filmmakers will participate in workshops, receive mentoring, and use program stipends to strategically advance their films. The program will culminate in a works-in-progress screening.
We are excited to share the selected projects, which include thoughtful intergenerational stories and powerful portraits of local community members that can help us enrich our understanding of each other and ourselves.
Seeds of Ancestral Memory
Director: Diana Diroy
In an effort to continue tradition, create legacy, and honor ancestry, immigrants and their descendants living in the Bay Area are cultivating seeds and growing plants from their Asian homelands to feed their kin and communities.
Black High Tea
Director: Jay Gash
A Black Queer woman reclaims joy and preserves her mother’s living legacy of tea parties. She seeks to hold space for connection and healing that affirms Black women, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ individuals in a post-pandemic world.
On Woody Lane
Director: Rose Hoang
In San Jose, California, a rebellious daughter documents her Vietnamese immigrant father’s bird cage business, exploring post-Vietnam War survival, dreams, and joy through a road trip, burnt cigarettes, and a home filled with bird cages on Woody Lane.
From Civil Rights to Crunch Cakes
Director: Deepa Nair
A beloved 85-year-old local baker, a former public television broadcaster, social justice activist, and the first Black mayor of San Mateo, reflects on her life and works in this creative portrait film.
Finding Má
Director: Thanh Tran
After 20 years apart, a bi-racial Vietnamese and Black family shattered by the foster care and prison systems reunites to heal old wounds and rebuild their family, starting with finding their unhoused mother in the streets of Sacramento.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.