LOS ANGELES --

Following the success of the PGA Create program’s scripted cycle last fall, the Producers Guild of America announced the 11 new producers and producing teams invited to take part in the inaugural documentary cohort of the PGA Create lab for emerging and mid-career documentary producers, sponsored by Google. PGA Create’s focus is on supporting producers from underrepresented backgrounds.

PGA Create sponsored by Google will be held April 25-28. The program is an immersive lab for documentary producers and producing teams actively developing, financing and packaging projects in nonfiction. Participants will have opportunities to hone their project pitches, attend master classes with experienced producers and build their network of fellow producers.

PGA Create is designed to provide touch points over the span of one year, including an invitation for participants of its Scripted and Documentary cycles to re-convene during the PGA Create Forum, a new day-long event held during the Guild’s signature Produced By Conference June 11-12 on the Fox studio lot.

“We are thrilled to welcome our inaugural class of PGA Create documentary fellows alongside Google. Documentary filmmaking and television has grown tremendously in the past decade, and audience consumption of nonfiction content has never been stronger. We’re very thankful to Google for aligning with our vision for this program,” shared Producers Guild presidents Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher in a joint statement.

The Google partnership with the PGA was negotiated by UTA Entertainment & Culture Marketing, which represents Google.

Producers and producing teams invited to participate in the PGA Create documentary cycle are:

Documentary Features

• Jameka Autry, producer, and Angela Tucker, director/producer, The Inquisitor. Through the exploration of the legacy of Barbara Jordan, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South, The Inquisitor asks, “What does it mean to be Black and patriotic in a divided America?”
• Paige Bethmann, producer/director, and Jessica Epstein, producer, Remaining Native. Exploring the legacy and impacts of Indian boarding schools by following a young Native American cross-country runner who runs the 50 mile escape route his great-grandfather took as he fled from the Stewart Indian School.
• Tracy Chitupatham, producer, and Anh Phan, producer, New Wave. 1980s’ California. Seeking healing and community, teenage refugees unknowingly pioneer an underground “Vietnamese New Wave” music scene so popular that it catalyzes the establishment of an influential diaspora entertainment industry.
• Christine Delp, producer, Querida. Fed up with a thousand years of exclusively male leadership, a global coalition of women in Latin America and the United States work together to change women’s roles in the Catholic Church.
• Nadia Gill, producer, and Nevo Shinaar, producer, Messengers. Four conservative climate change activists try to persuade their conservative tribe to call for immediate climate action.
• Kristina Goolsby, producer, and Maeve Kerigan, producer, Untitled “Misstress Formika” Documentary. “Misstress Formika” AKA Michael Formika Jones pioneered 90s NYC nightlife as a radical form of rebellious queer performance art until repressed childhood wounds resurface and gentrification displaced him and drove him into addiction. Today, sober, he undertakes his next metamorphosis in Albuquerque, NM.
• Juliana Schatz, director & producer, and Tanja Tawadjoh, producer, Providencia.  A Colombian woman witnesses members of her family lose their memory and wonders if she will be next. Unknowingly, she may hold the cure as medical researchers race against time—and history—to access the answer within her.
• Nicole Teeny, producer, and Mariel Sarkis, producer, Dear Friend: The Sarah Hegazi Documentary.  Determined to change Egypt, queer activist Sarah Hegazi became one of the first-ever in Egypt to raise the rainbow flag publicly. It cost her imprisonment, torture, and ultimately her life. However, she didn’t only change—Egypt, she changed the world.
• Mars Verrone, producer, and Samantha Curley, producer, Untitled Labor Union Documentary.  An intimate portrait of workers taking on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.

Documentary Series

• John Lopez, producer, Scam Dunk.  A documentary series that aims to expose the illicit trade of young international basketball players to America – who find themselves trapped in a con by nefarious agents – until they are cheated out of all their money and left to compete in horrid living conditions.
• Garland McLaurin, producer, and Mike Brown, producer, Black Minds Matter. The human mind can break down in the face of police brutality, voter suppression, barriers to quality healthcare, the prison industrial complex, education inequalities, and media bias. How do we carve out space for healing and restoration? Celebrated psychologist Dr. Thema Bryant, also a producer on the series, will guide us through this journey of the mental health landscape for Black people in America.

PGA Create was developed through the PGA One Guild initiative, which supports inclusive membership, employment, content, and authentic depictions. Tonya Lewis Lee and Lori McCreary are chairs of One Guild.

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