“We are honored to receive a grant from Amplify Her Foundation. This support will help us continue to raise women’s voices, build powerful networks and change how women are seen. Film is one of the most powerful tools for building empathy and modeling behavior. With the grant from Amplify Her Foundation, we can provide the resources to hundreds of women so that they can use this tool more equitably.”
Moonshot Initiative, formerly known as the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge, promotes gender equity by creating opportunities for women and non-binary people to bring their leadership, talents, and stories to the forefront of the film and television industry. They aim to empower and support underrepresented voices and promote a more inclusive media landscape.
GRANT PURPOSE & IMPACT
Amplify Her Foundation funding will strengthen Moonshot Initiative’s general operations, and core mission to advance women’s leadership in media.
Women are significantly underrepresented in the film industry, with only 22% working on the top 100 films in 2022. Despite women comprising roughly half of film school graduates, only 18% of directors for micro-budget features are female due to financial barriers and male-dominated networks. Moonshot Initiative addresses these challenges by providing female-led networks and removing financial barriers for women, enabling them to create high-quality films at no cost.
Through their film challenges, which puts groups of strangers together to make a film in one weekend, they provide women access to over a million dollars of professional gear, insurance, and permits, allowing them to build powerful portfolios. Many participants have gone on to secure jobs, start businesses, and increase their income as a result of their programs.
The Moonshot Initiative advances the careers of thousands of underrepresented voices. Whether it’s through their free film challenge, or through their pilot accelerator, which finds the most promising TV writers and gets them in front of top development executives, their programs are all designed to create supportive and diverse learning environments to help the next wave of talent advance in the industry.
By elevating women and nonbinary filmmakers to positions of influence within the industry, they ensure that women’s stories are told, that harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated in the media are challenged, and therefore, are creating a more equitable and diverse industry.
