Natalie Jasmine Harris
BEN IN BLOOM
IRVING HARVEY Post production (color) Grant
Description of project: Ben in Bloom is a short documentary that follows Ben Busick, a non-binary and queer teenager from the contentious Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as they prepare to leave their hometown behind for college in California. This short documentary nostalgically reflects on the moments that made Ben the confident queer teen advocate they are, but also the work left to be done to ensure safety for queer and trans teens to come.
About the filmmaker: Natalie Jasmine Harris is an award-winning Black queer filmmaker from Silver Spring, Maryland currently based in NYC. Her work is centered around a mission to tell stories that capture coming-of-age experiences, showcase Black joy, and reimagine liberation for marginalized communities. Pure, Natalie's NYU thesis short film, received The Directors Guild of America's Student Film Award and was acquired by HBOMax. She is currently in development on a feature-length version of Pure, which she hopes to become her debut feature. The project was an SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant recipient and was also selected for The Gotham Week Project Market, Outfest's Screenwriting Lab, Film Independent Fast Track, and The WIF x Sundance Financing Intensive. Natalie is an Outfest x Traverse32 Creative Hope Documentary Fellow and was a 2022 Creative Culture Filmmaking Fellow at The Jacob Burns Film Center. Her work has been featured in Teen Vogue, THEM Magazine, Huffington Post, The Cut, NBC, and more. She is currently in post-production on a new short narrative film, Grace, that reimagines queer Black girlhood in the 1950s and was shot on 16mm film by Tehillah de Castro. She is also working on a short documentary film supported by Traverse32, The Future of Film Is Female, and Outfest.