POV Shorts' Opal H. Bennett, with special guests, will guide you through successful awards, festival, and distribution strategies for short documentaries!

Overview

In this series of three classes, POV Shorts Executive Producer Opal H. Bennett, along with three special guest speakers, will present several documentary short case studies, exploring how each film saw successful awards campaigns, festival runs, and distribution. 

In each session, Bennett and our guest speakers will explore the challenges and opportunities unique to short documentary films, digging into the nuts and bolts of how budget limitations, being new to the industry, and alternative forms of distribution can be pivoted into success.

Participants will gain more familiarity with:

• How award bodies operate
• The landscape of indie films and film festivals
• How different distributors curate and platform independent short documentaries

Gotham Members may attend this workshop at a special member price! Just log in to your account and RSVP from your Member Dashboard. 

Moderators

Opal H. Bennett

POV Shorts - Executive Producer

Opal H. Bennett is the Emmy-winning Executive Producer at POV Shorts and Senior Producer at POV. Under her curation, POV Shorts won the 2023, 2022, and 2020 IDA Award for Best Short Form Series and the series broadcast of the 2021 News & Documentary Emmy winner for Short Documentary, "The Love Bugs".

In her tenure at POV Shorts, Bennett has led the acquisitions of the Emmy®-winning "The Love Bugs", Oscar®-shortlisted "Between Earth & Sky", "A Broken House", "Águilas", "Shut Up and Paint", and "Happiness is £4M"; Grierson Award Nominee "Freedom Swimmer", Canadian Screen Award winner "Sing Me a Lullaby", Canadian Screen Award Nominee "Le Frére", and IDA Student Award Winner "Seahorse".

Opal is a graduate of Columbia Law School, holds a Master's in Media Studies from the London School of Economics, and received her B.A. from New York University.