Chicken & Egg Pictures
Contact information:
24 Union Square East, 5th Floor

New York, NY 10003
Website: http://www.chickeneggpics.org/
Type of foundation: Donor-advised fund managed by Tides Center.
Types of grants: Production, development, seed funding
Description: Chicken & Egg Pictures is a hybrid film fund and nonprofit production company. It was created to support women filmmakers, non-fiction and fiction, emergent and veteran, who are committed to using their story-telling skills and command of cinema to address the social justice, equity and human rights issues of our times locally, nationally and globally. It makes grants through:
- An annual Open Call for Proposals. Grants will go to women filmmakers and men co-directing with women and will be matched by mentorship. The Open Call is open to filmmakers producing films on any topic within the Chicken & Egg mandate.
- The Mother Wit Human Rights Film Fund which advances the human rights movement through the support of story-driven documentaries. The Fund will provide support for nonfiction features, nonfiction shorts, hybrid, new media/multiple platforms and other categories of film. Films should encourage action domestically and globally in areas including civil rights; reproductive health rights; environmental, racial, and economic justice; education and literacy; and, especially, issues related to women and girls. Films must lead with a story and help expand and extend the definition of human rights to mean all the basic rights needed for people to thrive. Mother Wit grants are available to women filmmakers to address critical human rights struggles in the United States and the global south.
- The Which Came First Environmental Film Fund, focused on interactions between humans and the environment (broadly defined).
Chicken & Egg Pictures is a fiscally-sponsored project of Tides Center. Tides is a public charity offering individuals and institutions a vehicle for their philanthropy. Unlike many other foundations, Tides does not have discretionary grantmaking funds and has no open proposal submission process. Rather, it partners with individual and institutional donors who have donor-advised funds and direct their own grantmaking. Most of the funds at Tides do not accept unsolicited proposals.
Sample grants: Specific grant amounts were not found. The Chicken & Egg Fund has supported several filmmakers in the past, in some cases partnering with them as executive producer.
Fit for public broadcasting: Chicken & Egg Pictures is a fit for filmmakers interested in social issues. Films exploring issues facing women and girls are of high interest to the Fund. This may well converge with the recently launched three-year public media initiative, Women & Girls Lead.
Eligibility: The film's director must be a woman. Films with female/male co-directors will also be eligible. Filmmakers must be affiliated with a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization or have an eligible fiscal sponsor to receive a grant (but not to apply). At this time, the Fund will only accept proposals from U.S.-based projects.
Deadline: Chicken and Egg Pictures is now accepting applications for its 2012 Open Call. The Open Call deadline is June 29, 2012.
How to apply: Chicken & Egg Pictures issues calls for proposals. Interested applicants should review the relevant guidelines (see Open Call guidelines here). The Open Call application should be submitted online and is available here.
Giving range: Grants will range from $5,000 to $25,000 for non-executive produced projects. The average grant size will be approximately $10,000.
Assets: Not stated.
Total giving: Not stated.
