Advisor Studio: Director Jamila Wignot & Producer Lauren DeFilippo (AILEY) on Prepping Your Documentary
About this Advisor Studio
In Advisor Studio sessions, Sundance Collab Advisors share field experiences and insights into their specific areas of craft, including writing, directing and producing for TV and film.
Embarking on a new documentary project requires vision, strategic planning, and preparation. Director Jamila Wignot, and producer Lauren DeFilippo, premiered their most recent feature, AILEY, at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. Join us as Jamila and Lauren take us inside their process for prepping documentary films. We'll discuss how Jamila approaches research, sources archival footage and navigates on-camera interviews. We'll also explore how she and Lauren seek funding and build production budgets. This conversation will give you practical tools and advice to help you tackle the prep stages of your next documentary film.
Advisor StudioTeam
Jamila Wignot
Advisor
Jamila Wignot is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker. Her directing work includes AILEY (Sundance '21); the Peabody, Emmy and NAACP award-winning series THE AFRICAN-AMERICANS: MANY RIVERS TO CROSS (PBS), hosted by Henry Louis Gates; TOWN HALL (co-directed with Sierra Pettingill), a longitudinal portrait of Tea Party activists determined to unseat Barack Obama; and, for PBS’s American Experience series, the Peabody Award-winning TRIANGLE FIRE and Emmy-nominated WALT WHITMAN. Jamila’s producing credits include Sierra Pettengill’s forthcoming feature documentary RIOTSVILLE, U.S.A (Sundance '22); W. Kamau Bell’s BRING THE PAIN (A&E); and the narrative feature A STRAY (SXSW ‘16).
Lauren DeFilippo
Advisor
Lauren DeFilippo is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and partner at Insignia Films, where she most recently produced AILEY (Sundance 2021). The acclaimed feature documentary was released in theaters nationwide by NEON, broadcast on PBS and is currently streaming on Hulu. Lauren’s directorial debut RED HEAVEN (SXSW 2020) was recently released by Utopia Films and is now available on Apple TV. Listed on Award Radar's "Top Ten Documentaries of 2020," Criterion Cast called it "a truly one of a kind film." Her short documentaries, most notably CLEAN HANDS, have been featured at festivals internationally, including Slamdance, TIFF and Hot Docs and have appeared on The New York Times Op-Docs series. Lauren was a 2019 Gotham Lab fellow, and in 2021 she was included on DOC NYC and HBO's annual list of "40 Under 40" documentary filmmakers to watch.