How Filmmakers Build, Share, and Sustain the Ecosystems Behind Independent Film
Program Runtime: Approximately 90 minutes
Moderator: LaChelle Chrysanne
Panelists: Brittany Franklin, Brandon Nick, Kitty Hu, Prerana Thakurdesai
Independent filmmaking depends on community, but building a real community requires much more than networking.
COMMUNITY IS INFRASTRUCTURE brings together people actively building filmmaker communities to examine what turns a collection of creatives into an ecosystem people can actually rely on.
What creates trust and sustained participation? Who is a community designed to serve? How do identity, shared experience, craft and geography shape the spaces filmmakers need? How are opportunities and resources distributed? What happens as communities grow? And who performs the often invisible labor required to sustain them?
The conversation will also look beyond individual organizations. Filmmakers frequently move between many different creative communities, even when the organizations supporting them are intentionally built around specific identities, disciplines or experiences.
How can these communities collaborate, share resources, make referrals and strengthen the larger independent film ecosystem without sacrificing the identities and missions that make each organization valuable?
Together, the panelists represent community models serving BIPOC and disabled filmmakers, queer filmmakers of color, Asian American documentary workers, and women and non-binary documentary filmmakers of Indian heritage, offering a practical look at how different creative ecosystems build access, opportunity, solidarity and long-term support.
PARTICIPANTS
LaChelle Chrysanne - Moderator
LaChelle Chrysanne is a writer, producer, filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist passionate about music, film, culture, storytelling and empowering marginalized voices. She is the Founder and Creative Director of multimedia brand 88 HUES, host of the Day One Fans podcast, an event producer and creative consultant, and serves as Treasurer and Director of the Nukhu Foundation.
Brittany Franklin - Minorities in Film
Brittany Franklin is a director, producer and cultural strategist whose work centers the emotional truth of real people through cinematic storytelling. A One Show Pencil-winning producer, she is a WBD Access, Creative Futures x Soho House Worldwide, and Sundance Uprising Fellow. Through her studio Cerebral Entertainment, her directing work includes Strictly The Best at SummerStage and the Queerty-nominated series NATIVES. Franklin is also the founder of Minorities in Film, which advances the careers and economic security of BIPOC and disabled filmmakers through direct access to paid opportunities, industry resources and accessible creative infrastructure. Its Branded Lab, one of the industry's early programs specifically serving BIPOC and disabled directors, was developed with partners including Free The Work, 72andSunny, AICP, PrettyBird, and Unicorns & Unicorns. Franklin is Hard of Hearing, classically trained, and Queens-raised.
Brandon Nick - Film Festival Friends / The Each-Other Project
Brandon Nick is an award-winning queer Afro-Caribbean filmmaker, portrait photographer and podcaster whose work sits at the intersections of community, Blackness, queerness and creative advocacy. He is co-founder of The Each-Other Project, a grassroots media organization serving queer and trans people of color, and creator of Film Festival Friends, a growing platform championing independent filmmakers of color. NewFest named him an Emerging Black LGBTQ+ Filmmaker.
Kitty Hu - Asian American Documentary Network / Shoes Off Media
Kitty Hu is a documentary producer, co-founder of Shoes Off Media and steering committee member of the Asian American Documentary Network, or A-Doc. Her community-centered documentary practice focuses on character-driven stories connected to labor, housing, migration, culture and climate. She directed the Emmy Award-winning L.A. Rebellion: A Cinematic Movement for PBS Artbound and has produced work for Hulu, PBS and HBO Max. Through A-Doc, she helps build a member-driven network centered on reciprocity, mutual care and collective power among Asian American nonfiction filmmakers.
Prerana Thakurdesai - Bitchitra Collective
Prerana Thakurdesai is a New York-based director and producer whose documentary work spans independent features, shorts and television. A Producers Guild of America fellow and DOC NYC Documentary New Leader honoree, she is co-founder of Bitchitra Collective, a community of more than 450 women and non-binary documentary filmmakers of Indian heritage. Bitchitra works to create a more equitable film and media landscape through resources, collaboration, learning, networking and solidarity. Thakurdesai has also served as President of the South Asian Journalists Network.
WATCH + VOTE
Explore the films competing at Nukhufest 2026 and vote for the film you want to become the 2026 Best Nuvee:
https://nukhu.com/view/0?stack=0
Audience voting continues through September 19 at 8 PM ET.
This ticket provides admission for one guest to this Nukhufest 2026 program block.
View the full Nukhufest schedule, participating films, program descriptions, runtimes, and event details at https://www.nukhufoundation.org/calendar.
Attending more than one program? Add additional Nukhufest blocks to your cart before checking out.