American Documentary

Overview

Brooklyn, N.Y. —August 5, 2024— POV Shorts and Chicken & Egg Pictures announced today the documentary short, The People Could Fly, directed by Imani Dennison and produced by Bryn Silverman, made its world premiere at the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival as part of the Embodied Shorts Program on August 3rd.

This film marks the first documentary coming out of the Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund content development collaboration that was announced last year. Imani Dennison was among five grantees across three projects to receive the inaugural grant. The People Could Fly is also the first original produced by American Documentary/POV Shorts.

“I couldn’t be happier for the World Premiere of The People Could Fly to be at the BlackStar Film Festival. American Documentary has been a longtime supporter of the festival, it’s one of my favorite stops on the festival circuit and Imani is a BlackStar alum, so, in many ways, it’s a homecoming for them. With this premiere, POV Shorts and our collaborators at Chicken & Egg, cross the wonderful milestone of first public outing of one of our trio of shorts and we’re so excited for audiences to see it,” Opal H. Bennett, executive producer of POV Shorts and senior producer at American Documentary I POV.

"It has been an absolute honor to work with Imani and Bryn in helping to bring their vision to life. This lyrical film captures the joy and expanse of freedom. It is both deeply rooted in community and transcends the boundaries of time and space,” adds Kiyoko McCrae, Program Director at Chicken & Egg Pictures. “We are proud to partner with POV Shorts and are thrilled for the first of our co-production shorts to be premiering at BlackStar which features some of the most exciting, groundbreaking, and liberatory programming on the festival circuit."

"We are always looking for new ways to collaborate on non-fiction stories, and the Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund was created in response to a lack of avenues to amplify independent artists who take creative risks," said Erika Dilday, executive director American Documentary and executive producer POV, POV Shorts and America ReFramed. "We are proud to announce The People Could Fly, directed by Imani Dennison and produced by Bryn Silverman, as the first original produced by American Documentary/POV Shorts. We are excited to present the short's world premiere at the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival, and Imani's bold storytelling is sure to resonate with the audience."

The People Could Fly is a poetic documentary about the history of Black gathering spaces in Louisville, Kentucky, from the 1960s to mid 2000s. In this intimate video portrait, we delve into the ritual of roller skating and how roller rinks emerged as sanctuaries for Black culture. Through a charged combination of archival footage, still photos, newly shot material and newsreel footage, we explore the history of a segregated Louisville and the magic that its Black community has conjured as an act of resistance.

“In The People Could Fly, I wanted to pay homage to Black Southern folktales and paint a portrait of the spaces we use as a refuge in my hometown of Louisville,” said Imani Dennison, director, The People Could Fly. “I was fortunate to have the support of the community while making this film. Everyone is very excited to share a piece of their history with the world, and for me, it is a dream come true to see it at the BlackStar Film Festival.”

The People Could Fly is an American Documentary | POV Shorts, Chicken & Egg Pictures co-production. The director and cinematographer is Imani Dennison. The producers are Imani Dennison and Bryn Silverman. Naveen Chaubal and Flor de Oro Tejada are the co-producers, and the associate producers are Demi Gardner, Lauren Fulwiler and Nicole Van Straatum. The editors are Jonathan Proctor and Derek Schultz. The production designers are Ashley Eddings and Alissa Winburn. The sound designer is Laura Sofia Perez and the composer is Aquiles Navarro.

About the Filmmakers

Imani Dennison, Director, Cinematographer, The People Could Fly Imani Dennison, (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and award winning filmmaker born in Louisville, Kentucky. Imani graduated from Howard University where they studied Political Science and Photography. Through image based mediums and sound, Imani interrogates hidden and counter histories centered around folklore, fantasy, fables. Imani has created commissioned documentary works for PBS, Tribeca, ITVS, and Procter & Gamble. Imani is a 2022 Tribeca Queen Collective Directing Program grantee where they directed their award winning creative non-fiction film, Bone Black: Midwives vs the South that made its international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Imani is currently a 2023 Chicken & Egg Pictures/POV Shorts Fund grant recipient which awarded them the opportunity to produce their short creative non-fiction film, The People Could Fly, about the ritual of roller skating and how roller rinks emerged as sanctuaries for Black culture in Louisville, Kentucky. Imani is a 2025 Black Rock Senegal artist in residence where they will work on an ongoing multi-media series, Mississippi Mud in Spring. They will spend fall 2024 further developing this project as a fellow of The North Star Fellowship a collaboration between the Points North Institute and the BlackStar Film Festival.

Bryn Silverman, Producer, The People Could Fly Bryn Silverman (she/her) is an Emmy® nominated filmmaker based in Louisville, KY. Recently, she produced Imani Dennison's The People Could Fly (2024 BlackStar Film Festival) and Katrina Sorrentino's Tidal (DOC NYC 2023.) She is drawn to stories that explore myth making and self-determination. She is currently producing Naveen Chaubal's Pinball, an ITVS co-production that has been supported by the Sundance Film Institute, CAAM, the New Orleans Film Society, Just Films, among others. She is also producing Riley Hooper's Vestibule along with Caitlin Mae Burke, where she won the 2023 Ji.hlava New Visions Forum and will participate in the 2024 Points North Pitch. She was a field producer on Under G-d (2023 Sundance Film Festival) and an editor on This World is Not My Own (2023 SXSW.) She was also a story producer on Amend: The Fight for America, a Netflix documentary series about the impact of the 14th Amendment. She is a Southern Producers’ Lab alum with the New Orleans Film Society and a recently elected board member of the Documentary Producers Alliance.

About

About POV Shorts

POV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely POV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries.The series is known for its curation, and for broadcasting award-winning titles, including: Emmy® nominated Earthrise, Water Warriors, The Changing Same, Emmy® winner The Love Bugs and the Oscar® shortlisted A Broken House and Aguilas. It won Best Short Form Series at the IDA Documentary Awards in 2023, 2022 and 2020.

About Chicken & Egg Pictures
Chicken & Egg Pictures shapes a more equitable and just world with the catalytic power of documentary films by providing funding, mentorship, and industry access to a global community of women and gender-expansive filmmakers. We believe greater gender representation behind the camera results in documentary films that reflect the diversity and complexity of the human experience. It is our mission to disrupt systemic barriers so filmmakers thrive in their careers and artful, society-changing films get made. Since our founding, Chicken & Egg Pictures has awarded over $12 million in grants and devoted thousands of hours of creative mentorship to over 500 filmmakers from around the world. Films supported by C&E have been nationally and internationally recognized with the industry’s highest honors, including Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, and Peabody Awards—and they have raised visibility and driven social change on urgent issues. Recently supported films include Oscar-nominated Writing With Fire and Ascension, Emmy-nominated One Child Nation, Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize-winning The Eternal Memory, and Oscar-winning American Factory. For additional information please visit our website at www.chickeneggpics.org.

About POV

Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied (1989), Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1992), Rabbit in the Room (1999), Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (2001), Made in L.A. (2007), American Promise (2013), Not Going Quietly (2021), While We Watched (2022), A House Made of Splinters (2022) and the mini-series And She Could be Next (2020). Throughout its history POV has featured the work of award-winning, innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras, Nanfu Wang, Frederick Wiseman, Emiko Omori, Janus Metz Pedersen and Ava DuVernay. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. In 2024, Indiewire named seven POV films in its roundup of “The 50 Best Documentaries of the 21st Century”: Faya Dayi (2021), The Mole Agent (2020), Minding The Gap (2018), Cameraperson (2016), The Look of Silence (2015), The Act of Killing (2013) and After Tiller (2013). All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

POV goes “beyond the broadcast” to bring powerful nonfiction storytelling to viewers wherever they are. Free educational resources accompany every film and a community network of thousands of partners nationwide work with POV to spark dialogue around today’s most pressing issues. POV continues to explore the future of documentary through innovative productions with partners such as The New York Times and The National Film Board of Canada and on platforms including Snapchat and Instagram.

POV films and projects have won 47 Emmy Awards, 28 George Foster Peabody Awards, 15 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.

About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, Acton Family Giving, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.