Documentary Educational Resources, Inc.

We offer a robust menu of support services to media makers currently in production. Our major service is fiscal sponsorship, through which we are able to extend our non-profit status and offer fiscal oversight for projects. We are particularly interested in working with filmmakers who are producing innovative work that gives voice to those outside mainstream media. During the year DER may be managing or consulting on any one of over 40 documentary film or media projects in production.

Collectively, the films in the DER collection constitute an important visual record of cultures, traditions and identities around the world. For each film, we retain master materials, whether on film, tape or a digital file. As part of the Collections Management and Preservation Program we work to ensure long-term access to the films in our collection.

Unless we can record with film and tape the sights and sounds of their life, the world loses – and loses forever – part of the rich repertoire of the past on which we must depend to understand the future.

— Margaret Mead, 1969, “Introduction” Gardens of War

This work ranges from inventorying and storage of the film masters, working with archives that can provide proper physical storage of materials, maintaining important information about the films in the collection, and fundraising for preservation and digitization projects.