Trump Cancellation Of Humanities Grants Sends Doc Filmmakers Reeling

One by one the emails hit inboxes, on letterhead of the National Endowment for the Humanities: that grant we gave you to make your documentary? It’s cancelled.

Last week, the Trump administration summarily terminated funding for 85 percent of NEH grants, including awards for numerous documentary projects.

“Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities… [T]he NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda,” the letter said. “The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority of the administration…” It was signed by Michael McDonald, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who replaced a Biden administration appointee forced out after Trump took office.

Tracie Holder, who had received a $485,000 production grant for The People’s Will, a film about the deadly 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York, got her form letter from the NEH on April 2.

“It was such a shock when it happened because these are highly competitive grants. They are rigorously vetted,” Holder tells MyRumors. “It was so unimaginable that we could lose this funding and to lose it so randomly, without any rationale, any real reasoning as to why. It’s just some vague sense that this no longer aligns with the priorities of this government. What are the priorities of the government? Denying people access to information, knowledge, to data?”

Another filmmaker, who requested anonymity for fear of potential retaliation, received the same form letter cancelling their $75,000 development grant for a film on the American West.

“The language [of the letter] is very surprising and very dramatic, and I had to read it a few times to even gather what it was implying,” the filmmaker tells MyRumors. “It is written as if we did something egregiously wrong and inflammatory, and it’s just not the case. It’s not an inflammatory film project and nor are the humanities generally. They’re often historical. They’re very academic. They’re rigorously researched and vetted.”

The Trump administration also canceled funding of state humanities councils, which reportedly receive $65 million a year from the NEH. Filmmakers who received grants through Cal Humanities, for instance, received notices that their awards have been suspended because of the administration’s move.

“The unexpected and illegal termination of our funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities is devastating to the State of California,” Cal Humanities President and CEO Rick Noguchi tells MyRumors in a statement. “We are now unable to support $650,000 in previous grant commitments to nonprofits, including documentary film projects. We were also planning to award close to $1 million for FY25. That means fewer opportunities for Californians to connect to ideas and one another to understand our shared heritage and diverse cultures.”

Another documentary filmmaker who requested anonymity for fear of possible reprisals had earned Cal Humanities grants for several projects. “We’ve gotten notice that says Cal Humanities will not be making further payments,” the filmmaker notes. “So now my three film projects I have are suffering from not having the funds that we absolutely need to complete and go further on these films.”

That filmmaker also got word last week that their $150,000 federal NEH grant had been terminated. “To have contracted funding pulled away is a shock, a stab,” the filmmaker says. “I feel very much like it is such a small amount of money in the scheme of things that it is an intentional targeting and immobilizing of intellectual and artistic work in our country, basically.”

The NEH did not respond to MyRumors’s request for comment. The Endowment describes itself as “an independent federal agency that supports the humanities in every state and U.S. jurisdiction. Since 1965, NEH has awarded over $6 billion to support museums, historic sites, universities, teachers, libraries, documentary filmmakers, public TV and radio stations, research institutions, scholars, and local humanities programming.”

For documentary filmmakers, the NEH has been a critical institution, providing support to projects not necessarily viewed as commercial by streaming platforms and other distributors, but that contribute to the country’s cultural heritage and its understanding of itself. Among landmark documentary films and series that have received NEH funding are the Civil Rights Movement-themed docuseries Eyes on the Prize, and many projects by perhaps America’s best-known documentarian.

“For 37 years, NEH has been helping Ken Burns make films,” writes Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, citing many projects directed or co-directed by the filmmaker, including The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, The Dust Bowl, Prohibition, and The Vietnam War. Of the latter project, Humanities writes, “Ken Burns and crew traveled a great many air-miles to tell both sides of the story, the American and the Vietnamese.”

Through his publicist, Burns declined to comment on the NEH cuts.

The NEH cuts are also affecting film festivals. “On April 2, late in the evening, we learned that our funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) was unexpectedly and illegally terminated,” Christina Marouda, founder of the Indian Film Festival Los Angeles, wrote on Facebook. “We were told that the ‘NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.’”

Last October, on the UN’s International Day of the Girl, the NEH crowed on Instagram that it was supporting Nancy Drew: The Case of the American Icon, “an upcoming documentary, on the OG #girlboss.” That grant of $600,000 to filmmaker Cathleen O’Connell is among those reportedly chopped.

Nonprofit organizations like the Center for Independent Documentary and the International Documentary Association (IDA) typically assist NEH grantees by offering logistical support on projects. In exchange, they take a percentage of grants.

“Eliminating NEH funding (as with IMLS [Institute of Museum and Library Services] funding and other public support) is an abuse of power that attempts to suppress both freedom of expression and access to knowledge,” Dominic Asmall Willsdon, executive director of International Documentary Association, tells MyRumors. “For the sake of documentary — and all truth-seeking art and inquiry — we need to stand up to this corrupt action.”

A number of filmmakers and institutions are questioning the legality of NEH grant cancellations, pointing out that the funding was originally authorized by Congress.

“It’s shocking to me that it seems like Congress is shirking its responsibility as an equal branch of government,” says a filmmaker whose grant was terminated. “It’s totally outrageous,” says another of the filmmakers who requested anonymity. “This is an executed contract from years ago whose terms are still active; it’s the funding from Congress that is being allocated and granted to me, and the reasons given in the [termination] letter are completely ridiculous.”

“These [grants] were authorized by Congress,” echoes Tracie Holder, the director of The People’s Will project. “Congress seems to have completely reneged on its own responsibilities and has ceded all of its power to the executive branch.”

Short of action by Congress or intervention by the courts, it’s unclear what filmmakers can do to try to get grants restored. The fate of the NEH itself remains uncertain. According to a New York Times report, “the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s government restructuring effort, have made several visits to the N.E.H. office… [M]anagers told staff members that DOGE had recommended reductions in staff of as much as 70 to 80 percent…”

Filmmakers who have sought NEH grants tell MyRumors the application process takes immense effort. Proposals may run upward of 100 pages or more and require the input and validation of academic experts. Directors liken it to writing a dissertation. “That is exactly what it is,” says Holder, whose films include the 2013 award-winning documentary Joe Papp in Five Acts. “It’s so sad to me, the idea that these stories won’t be available going forward, and that we don’t appreciate our own history. That’s so ironic to me about the administration. They talk about patriotism, and yet here, so many of these films are about American history.”

“Think all of the money that the government has invested in these projects that now will not result in benefit the public,” Holder adds. “It’s totally just throwing money out the window in my own case.”

Some filmmakers tell MyRumors the loss of the NEH grant will kill their project. Others are thinking about workarounds.

“It’s unclear at this particular moment what exactly is possible,” says one director. “I think some filmmakers will find other ways of raising the money. Most people will agree that it will probably take longer than they anticipated to finish their films, but for us, we’re going to find a way to finish it. We’ll get it done.”

The NEH grant cancellations come at a particularly difficult time for documentary filmmakers struggling to complete projects and obtain distribution for anything that falls outside the obvious genres of true crime and celebrity docs.

“I’m not sure what field is going to do. I wish I could say that we are incredibly creative and determined people. We have to be, to make documentary films already,” says a filmmaker. “This is a group of people that will find ways. At the same time, this is a lifeline that’s being cut, that’s being severed. And there’s so few that we’re so reliant on them. It’s a huge, huge hit.”