The Wild and Scenic Film Festival provides grants to eligible applicants to help offset the cost of their festival kit. The grants are awarded to non-profit organizations. Each grant is worth $1,000. The Wild and Scenic Film Festival began to support grass-roots community building to help the environment using film as a medium.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences offers grants to organizations hosting film festivals with any theme, including environmental themes, emphasizing that they prefer to fund film fests accessible to the general public. $450,000 was awarded to 24 festivals in the U.S. last year. Environmental Film Festival in the Capital was granted $20,000 in 2009.
The Independent Television Service funds documentary films broadcast on public television. ITVS has an open call for funding with no deadline and also offers international and diversity funds. In the past, it has funded environmentally themed films like “Next Year Country” by Joseph Aguierre and “Black Gold” by Nick and Mark Francis.
The Colombe Foundation funds grassroots organizations that promote peace, address the environment and expand media coverage that covers issues that promote change in American policy. In 2009, it awarded Mainstream Media/Arts of Peaces with $25,000 and in 2008 ReThink Media was awarded $60,000.