Firelight Media announced today that it is a Gold Winner in Community Outreach, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in The 3rd Annual Anthem Awards.

This year’s Anthem Award Winners were selected from a pool of over 2,000 submissions from 44 countries by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). Anthem judges are intellectually diverse leaders from across the impact industry with expertise that spans across the Anthem cause areas. IADAS members include: Heather Dowdy, Director of Product Accessibility, Netflix; Alex Amouyel, President & CEO, Newman’s Own Foundation; Noel Kinder, Chief Sustainability Officer, Nike; Shaniqua McClendon, Vice President of Politics, Crooked Media/Vote Save America; Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq., Executive Director, American Psychiatric Association Foundation; Alison Moore, CEO, Comic Relief US; Christina Lang, Vice President of North American Marketing, Mozilla; Michelle Waring, Steward for Sustainability and Everyday Good, Tom’s of Maine; and more.

Launched in 2020, Beyond Resilience is a series of panel discussions, essays, and film screenings created by and for communities of color that explore the challenges, strategies, and experiences of creating and distributing documentary media during periods of social transformation. Events in the series have been presented at BlackStar Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, DOC NYC, the New Orleans Film Festival, and the International Documentary Association’s Getting Real Conference, among other places. Beyond Resilience has established itself as a flagship event series for the documentary field, convening thought leaders from across public and commercial media, as well as filmmakers, artists, film critics, journalists, and scholars, among others, to discuss and address issues facing BIPOC communities.

“The Anthem Awards were born out of the desire to amplify and celebrate the voices that are creating sustainable change and to inspire others to take action,” said Patricia McLoughlin, Anthem Awards General Manager. “In a year where so much is at stake, it is incredibly important to recognize impact work and celebrate the progress happening globally. Congratulations to all of this year’s Winners.”

“I am honored that our Beyond Resilience series is receiving this recognition from The Anthem Awards,” said Firelight Media President Marcia Smith. “As I’ve long said, BIPOC filmmakers are the miner’s canary in the documentary film industry — as in many parts of American life. We work in a field in which opportunities and resources are not equitably distributed. The Beyond Resilience series has enabled us to assert our collective influence as BIPOC members of the industry at all levels: from executive leadership to emerging and mid-career filmmakers, journalists and critics, scholars and community leaders. Together, we stake our claim: No stories about us without us.”

Read more on our Medium Page.