News & Updates
"The best documentaries of 2017 will only become more vital as we leave this year behind, gaining perspective the further we drag ourselves from the past 12 months. It’s no small gesture to call a documentary film “essential,” but in a year in which so many of our lives have needed something essential, something urgent, to push us forward, ranking these films feels futile..."
Paste Magazine, The 15 Best Documentaries of 2017
"It’s compelling viewing when you cut through the chaff of our collective experience. When you dial into a person’s essence you are seeing them the way they deserve to be seen and this trailer is more dramatic than I would give some other fictional films credit for being." - Christopher Stipp
Raising Bertie will open theatrically June 9th. Stay tuned for more details and sign up for the Raising Bertie newsletter here.
Team Bertie is excited to be part of the Atlanta Film Festival! Raising Bertie will screen April 1st at 5pm at Plaza Theatre. Director, Margaret Byrne, will be in attendance.
TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE NOW: http://bit.ly/2lO0vB5
Raising Bertie, a coming-of-age tale of three young black men in rural Bertie County, North Carolina, will hold its world premiere at the 19th Annual Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham North Carolina on April 9, 2016. The feature-length documentary is a co-production between Beti Films and documentary collective Kartemquin Films. The premiere is also the debut of first-time feature-length director Margaret Byrne.
Filmed over the course of six-years, the film focuses on Reginald "Junior" Askew, Davonte "Dada" Harrell and David "Bud" Perry as they navigate unemployment, grief, violence, first love, fatherhood and estrangement from family members and mentors, all while trying to define their identities as adults. The film's three subjects will be present at the screening along with Byrne, producer Ian Kibbe, cinematographer Jon Stuyvesant and editor Leslie Simmer.
Tickets for the Sarasota Film Festival can be purchased now. Follow the link below.
Tickets for Full Frame Documentary Festival go on sale April 1. Follow the link below.
For more information, please view our press release.
As the Summer draws to a close, here are some exciting developments taking place for Beti Films in the Fall.
From September 20 - 25, the team behind Raising Bertie (#teambertie) will be in New York City for The Independent Filmmaker Project's (IFP) Project Forum at IFP Independent Film Week to be held at Lincoln Center. Raising Bertie was previously selected for IFP's Documentary Lab held in May. IFP has published the full slate of programming for Independent Film Week. More information can be found in this official press release by IFP.
We're excited to announce a special advanced work in progress screening of Raising Bertie, in Durham on Friday, September 25th! Raising Bertie will kick off the fourth season of Southern Documentary Fund's monthly work in progress series, Fresh Docs. The free screening will be held at the American Tobacco Campus' Full Frame Theater in Downtown Durham, NC. Following the screening, there will be a feedback session with the filmmaker that will be moderated by Southern Documentary Fund (SDF) director Rachel Raney. Fresh Docs is co-presented by Southern Documentary Fund and Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. Read more.
Raising Bertie is an official selection for this year's work-in-progress program at the Cucalorus Film Festival, which will be held on November 11 - 15 in Downtown Wilmington, N.C. Cucalorus is one of the largest film festivals held in the southern United States and was recently recognized by MovieMaker Magazine as "One of the Coolest Film Festivals in the World, 2014." More information on the festival can be found on the official site.
Nominations for the 36th Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards were announced on July 22, 2015 by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). American Promise received three Emmy Nominations for Best Documentary, Outstanding Coverage of a Current News Story-Long Form, and Outstanding Editing: Documentary and Long Form. Of all the nominees in this year's Outstanding Editing category, American Promise has the largest number of editors nominated; over the course of thirteen years (the length of time covered by the documentary), seven editors were hired to work on the project. As part of the editing team for American Promise, Margaret Byrne, director of the upcoming Raising Bertie, received a nomination for her work on the project. Byrne is also credited as a cinematographer on the film, as is fellow Raising Bertie collaborator Jon Stuyvesant.
The News & Documentary Emmy® Awards will be presented on Monday, September 28th, 2015, at a ceremony at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall (formerly Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic), located at Lincoln Center on Broadway on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The event will be attended by more than 1,400 television and news media industry executives, news and documentary producers and journalists. Emmy® Awards will be presented in 45 categories.
You can find more on the upcoming 36th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards and the full list of nominees here.
