Second Edition of Daniella’s Guestbook Offers Underrepresented Trans and LGBTQ Creative Professionals Exposure, Training, Tools, Mentors, and Employment Opportunities

Film festival submission deadline is June 25th!

Creative Producer, Motivational Speaker and LGBTQIA + Advocate Daniella Carter is teaming with creative agency SpecialGuest for the second edition of Daniella’s Guestbook, a website and Instagram channel that spotlights the work of BIPOC and LGBTQ creators. Serving as an access point to cultivate relationships with established industry leaders and emerging BIPOC artist. The goal is to create more accessibility for BIPOC creatives in hope to create a less homogeneous creative industry,creating more opportunities and diversifying representation behind the camera, where the control and the decisions are being made.

Daniella’s Guestbook launched in August 2020. It resulted in raising the visibility of a number of directors in the trans community, including Nyla Moon, who identifies as such, and Luchina Fisher, the parent of a trans child. Moon got an opportunity to work with Ryan Murphy on a Netflix project, a fellowship, and financial support for her short films, which have been killing it in the film festival circuit. Fisher was a GLAAD Awards nominee. 

This year, Carter aims to provide more long-term artist support and development with free online training sessions with industry experts, in-person activations such as educational panels with production companies, local arthouses, and corporations, and community marketing campaigns. 

Six submissions will be chosen to receive a $500 participation fee and the filmmaker will be featured in a Q&A with an industry professional. Films should be about trans sociocultural-issues and 30 minutes or under. The goal is to unlock employment opportunities in advertising and creative industries for underrepresented creators and talent and build a powerful network of future-makers who will shift norms for generations to come. The effort is accepting entries until June 15 25th through the submission page.

Daniella’s Guestbook has an advisory committee of industry leaders who are experts in their fields and aligned with these communities. These leaders will host Instagram Live Q&A conversations with this year’s selected artists on the Daniella’s Guestbook channel. The committee includes:

• Celebrity photographer Gillian Loub, who’s known for her shots of everyone from presidents to you name it. 
• Sidra Smith 
• Hill Harper, actress on ABC show The Good Doctor.
• Sarah Kate-Ellis CEO & President of GLAAD

The group is planning an industry night mixer on July 15th to announce and screen this year’s winning short films.  

Carter’s love for film and storytelling started at around age 18. She was part of Laverne Cox’ Emmy-award-winning documentary “The T Word.” From that opportunity, she was able to build out a public-speaking platform and community presence with TED Talks and brand campaigns. Ultimately, she realized that she needed to take additional steps to control the narrative.

“As time went along, I’ve gotten more opportunities to continue to tell my story on different avenues, but I felt like they weren’t really telling my story,” Carter says. “I felt like there are aspects of my story that really made me who I am, and when I looked at the ways the media tells the stories and experiences of trans people—I felt like I should learn what it takes to go behind the cameras instead of focusing on getting more gigs in front of the camera.”

Carter’s most recent work is a series that she co-directed for GLAAD in partnership with Gilead Sciences’ compass grant program. Carter is also featured in the Multi award-winning documentary “Kokomocity,” which is set for theatrical release in July.

Aaron Duffy and Daniella Carter met while working on an activism project through the non profit creative group, Papel e Caneta, launching a project called AskTransFolks. Years later, Daniella was a team member at the creative agency Duffy co-founded, SpecialGuest, working on project for Snapchat, TSMC, and Chewy. Today, Daniella and Duffy are collaborators, including the Southern Storybank project for GLAAD. 

  Daniella’s Guestbook, SpecialGuest