MacArthur Foundation Awards 3 J-School Alums Documentary Film Grants

Three UC Berkeley Journalism School alumni have been awarded prestigious documentary filmmaking grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The three are: Daffodil Altan (’04), Andres Cediel (’04), and Peter Nicks (’99).

Their grants are among 19 MacArthur awarded nationwide to documentary films that cover an array of timely social issues, including race relations, work obstacles for immigrants and mental illness.

Pete Nicks will receive $120,000 for his upcoming documentary, The Oakland Police Project. This film is the second installment in what Nicks has described as a multi-year initiative to tell the grand narrative of an American city, specifically Oakland. The documentary follows the city’s police as they work to rebuild trust in the community. It is the successor to Nicks’ 2012 film, The Waiting Room, also produced by his nonprofit organization Open’hood. That film, set in an Oakland hospital, won the Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction award, as well as honors from the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Nicks credits his time at the School with helping him build his career as a documentary journalist. “I think the J-School not only gives you the experience of shooting and editing, but you’re also a part of a community, all the people you go to school with; these are relationships that I’ll have forever and those connections are with both peers and mentors,” Nicks said.

Nicks also credited Prof. Jon Else, former head of the documentary program, for his mentorship. Else, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, is a well-established documentary filmmaker in his own right, whose work has won an Academy Award and four National Emmys. “Else had a tremendous impact on my development as a documentary filmmaker and as a person,” Nicks said.

Daffodil Altan and Andres Cediel, producers at the J-School’s Investigative Reporting Program (IRP), were awarded $150,000 for their upcoming documentary Trafficked. The film is about a criminal underground system that allows U.S. companies to profit from workers–many of them immigrants–held as modern-day slaves in a practice known as labor trafficking.

The reporting for Trafficked came out of previous work conducted for the award-winning PBS Frontline documentaries Rape in the Fields and Rape on the Nightshift, investigative features that were made by a collaboration led by the IRP. “As we were investigating sexual assault with immigrant women in low-wage industries, we found that that was only one of the forms of exploitation that a lot of these people were suffering and that not just the women, but men and even children are being exploited in all kinds of ways,” Cediel said.

“It’s something that is happening in the U.S. and a story we believe needs to be told,” Altan said. “We are trying to shed light on how labor trafficking operates in the U.S.”

Both of the producers believe that the J-School played an important role in their investigative reporting careers. Altan said there is something great about working with TV/documentary peers from the School. “We know we all work hard to do this job well. And things have recently come full circle in that sense “Ò I am now working with an excellent team, many of them former J-Schoolers, under the direction of Lowell Bergman at the IRP,” Altan said.

Like Nicks, Cediel praised Jon Else as a mentor. “Jon inspired me in every way,” Cediel said. “He not only taught us the craft of storytelling, but how to work as a documentarian in a responsible and ethical manner. I feel like I am still learning from him today, and wouldn’t be where I am without his guidance, and the documentary program.”

Other J-School alums and faculty involved in the project include Carrie Lozano (’05), one of the executive producers, and Prof. Lowell Bergman.

J-School Dean Edward Wasserman expressed pride in the news about the MacArthur grants. “This is amazing; it’s powerful testimony to the extraordinary quality of two of the J-School’s top programs, documentary and investigative reporting, which keep turning out exceptional graduates. Their work is tough and smart, and its impact is felt throughout the industry and the country. I’m so proud of them and thrilled about this honor.”

By Akira Olivia Kumamoto (’17)

For more information about Trafficked, The Oakland Police Project or the grant, visit the MacArthur Foundation website.