Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant

Overview

The Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant is administered by New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) and provides a $6,500 film completion grant to a woman filmmaker for a film on physical or developmental disability issues. The grant is made possible through the generosity of Loreen Arbus, a prominent advocate for people with disabilities and for women in media, and reflects her commitment to ensuring that disability stories are told on screen by filmmakers who approach the subject with seriousness and craft.

NYWIFT's mission is to connect, educate, and advocate for women to accelerate diversity in media. The Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant is one of several grants NYWIFT administers through its Fund for Women Filmmakers, which collectively supports women directors and producers across multiple funding categories each year.

What It Funds

The grant is a completion fund -- it supports the post-production phase of a film that has completed principal photography. Eligible costs include editing, color grading, sound design and mix, music licensing, accessibility features such as closed captioning and audio description, and the preparation of festival deliverables. Distributed films are not eligible: the grant is specifically for films that are in post-production and have not yet been released.

The $6,500 amount is not intended to cover the full cost of post-production but to provide a meaningful contribution to completion expenses, typically alongside other finishing funds or crowdfunding campaigns.

Eligibility

• The applicant must be a woman director or producer
• The film must address physical or developmental disability issues
• Principal photography must be completed
• The film must not yet be distributed
• The filmmaker must be US-based

Both documentary and narrative films are eligible, as are short and feature-length formats. The disability subject requirement is substantive: the film's central subject should be disability -- not a film where disability is a peripheral element of the story.

Who Should Apply

Women directors or producers in post-production on a film whose central subject is physical or developmental disability. The grant is open to both emerging and established filmmakers. Given the specific eligibility criteria -- woman filmmaker, disability subject, completed photography, not yet distributed -- the applicant pool is relatively targeted, making this a less competitive application than broader completion funds.

Application Timeline

The grant opens for applications annually, typically in the first quarter of the year. Filmmakers should check the NYWIFT website for the current deadline and application requirements.

See Also

For post-production planning and storage cost estimation, use the Storage and Footage Calculator. For an overview of film financing and grant stacking strategies, see Documentary Financing: Building Your Stack.