Funding BIPOC Documentaries

Min Sook Lee
Filmmaker and DOC Ontario Board Member

Min Sook Lee has directed numerous critically-acclaimed documentaries, including: Donald Brittain Gemini winner Tiger Spirit, Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature winner Hogtown, Canadian Screen Award winner, The Real Inglorious Bastards. Her doc Migrant Dreams which told the story of migrant farm workers fighting for justice was awarded Best Labour Documentary by the Canadian Journalists Association and garnered the prestigious Canadian Hillman Prize which honours journalists whose work identifies important social and economic issues in Canada. 

Min Sook is an Associate Professor at OCAD University, her area of research and filmmaking focuses on counter hegemonic narratives of resistance and feminist working-class cultural praxis for a world that centres justice, equity and humanity.

Joan Jenkinson
Executive Director, Black Screen Office (BSO)

Joan Jenkison is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Black Screen Office where she works to empower Black Canadians working within the screen industries to thrive and share their stories. She is committed to making sector practices and policies equitable and free of anti-Black racism, and to work collaboratively with decision-makers to ensure system-level change. Joan is a founding Partner/Producer at Artemis Pictures which is focused on developing and producing scripted content for television and the cinema, for international audiences. Joan was Vice-President of Independent Production for ZoomerMedia Limited, Television Division. She commissioned, developed and executive produced hundreds of hours of award-winning creative content in all genres for VisionTV. Joan spearheaded VisionTV’s ground-breaking DiverseTV/NSI initiative which produced award-winning comedy and drama programs and earned her a Visionary Award from the ReelWorld Film Festival.

For five years, Joan served as Executive Director of Women in Film and Television – Toronto (WIFT-T), where she established professional development training and networking opportunities for women in screen-based media.

Lisa Valencia-Svensson
Executive Director, Racial Equity Media Collective (REMC)

Lisa is an Emmy award winning and Academy Award shortlisted producer and Managing Director of the Racial Equity Media Collective. She was previously the Acting Industry Programs Director at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Before that she was Head of Operations at Multitude Films. Credits include PRAY AWAY, ALWAYS IN SEASON, CALL HER GANDA, HERMAN’S HOUSE, MIGRANT DREAMS and THE WORLD BEFORE HER.

Kadon Douglas
Executive Director, BIPOC TV & FILM

A storyteller and community connector at heart, Kadon Douglas is the inaugural executive director at BIPOC TV & Film. Kadon is an experienced not-for-profit professional specializing in community engagement, marketing, and communications. Previously, she led communications and membership engagement strategies and advocated for gender equity in screen-based media at Women in Film & Television-Toronto (WIFT-T).

Kadon also worked for several years in the documentary production field as a production coordinator, researcher, and digital marketing/audience engagement specialist. She is a two-time fellow of the Hot Docs Film Festival: Doc Accelerator (2013) and Shaw Media Diverse Voices (2015); and is a 2019 Ontario Nonprofit Network RBC Leading the Future fellow. Kadon is also an active member of the screen-based media community, volunteering her time on various committees and juries, and is the former chair of the Reelworld Film Festival.

Sally Lee
Executive Director, Canadian Independent Screen Fund for BPOC creators (CISF)

In addition to serving as Executive Director of the Canadian Independent Screen Fund for BPOC creators, Sally is on the boards of the CONTACT Photography Festival and Wavelength Music. She is a member of the Advisory at Reel Asian, where she served as ED for three festivals. She also led artists rights group CARFAC Ontario as ED and has variously held leadership, staff, board, and advisory positions at TIFF, Soulpepper Theatre, Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, Images Festival, Coalition of Canadian Independent Media Arts Distributors (VUCAVU.com), Workman Arts (RWM Festival), Toronto Arts Council Visual and Media Arts Committee, and Access Copyright.