How ACE91’s Ceci Chan is working to produce profitable, uplifting content

Strategic investor and philanthropist Ceci Chan has always been driven by the idea of doing well — while also doing good. Now the self-described “practical humanist” is bringing that approach to the international film and TV business with ACE91, the US-based content creation company she started three years ago.

The company is designed “to develop and deliver profitable, sustainable content, but also to build a more cohesive and peaceful community,” says Chan. “It is about putting capital and talent together to create something positive in the universe.”

In the investment world, Chan invests in sustainable energy consumption and blockchain technology. These subjects, along with content creation, are her three areas of focus.

As a member of the executive board of the USC Shoah Foundation, the Los Angeles-based non-profit founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 to record testimonies from Holocaust survivors and other genocides, she has already produced three documentary films: The Girl And The Picture, Two Sides Of Survival and Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses.

Chan and Nancy Gibbs (the first female editor-in-chief of Time magazine and director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center) conceived of creating the HKSSC’s Documentary Film Research Initiative — which launched in March 2023 — and examines issues facing documentary film practice and industry, and the medium’s role in civic life.

Creative powerhouse

ACE91 teams Chan with June Beallor, Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker and Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses producer, in making both documentary and narrative features and TV projects, using the firm’s own capital as well as working with like-minded co-producers and co-financiers.

ACE91’s first entirely self-funded project is 2020 Chaos And Hope, a feature documentary directed by Beallor in which frontline workers, activists, scientists and politicians reflect on the first year of the Covid‑19 pandemic and the racial strife, political unrest and economic disparity revealed as the year unfolded.

“The documentary focuses on the decades of policies that got us to where we are now,” reveals Chan, who conceived the project and wrote the story treatment after researching income inequality, disinformation and other issues during the Covid lockdown and produced the film with Beallor. As well as delivering “a necessary, important message to the world”, Chan says, the film will serve “to demonstrate to the content-creation community that ACE is capable of developing its own content, of delivering a product that is of a certain standard”.

At Cannes, UTA is handling world sales on 2020 Chaos And Hope, which had a limited theatrical release via Abramorama in October 2022. UTA and ACE91 are hosting a reception and private screening on May 20 at the Carlton Hotel, with the filmmakers taking part in a post-screening conversation.

ACE91, together with UTA and Screen International, is also hosting a gathering to celebrate and reveal the latest recipient of its Hope Awards. The awards were launched at the SXSW festival in March and are intended to spotlight individuals who use film and all forms of media to better the human condition. Inaugural honorees included Deepak Chopra, and filmmaker awards recognised Davis Guggenheim’s Apple TV+ documentary Still: A Michael J Fox Movie and Penny Lane’s Confessions Of A Good Samaritan.

ACE91 is now developing a documentary based on The Silk Roads: A New History Of The World, the bestselling 2016 book by Oxford University professor of global history Peter Frankopan. Looking at how developments such as climate change, trade and commerce have affected individuals over 3,000 years of history, the book offers “an ocean of content”, says Chan, and could provide a basis for scripted and unscripted TV series projects as well.

Chan is now also writing a script for a narrative feature and working with Beallor on two ideas for TV series.

Beallor established her June Beallor Productions film company in 2000 with a primary focus on historical subjects, social issues and activism. Chan is a strong believer in Beallor’s talent and they will expand the scope of their collaboration.

By 2024 ACE91 aims to be making two or three projects a year in a variety of genres and mostly with budgets in what she describes as the investment “sweet spot” range of $5m to $30m. The company, says Chan, has the right combination of funding resources and capital market expertise to make constructive content financially viable — to make films and TV shows that do well and do good.

“That’s the ACE91 brand. I do believe the world is in need of constructive, positive content,” Chan asserts. “There are opportunities to create films that speak to the minds and souls of people who care about positive outcomes and dialling down the divisiveness and racism. I believe there is a global market for this kind of content.”