MARCO WILLIAMS
Filmography:
Crafting an Echo (2018)
Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt (2017)
Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2017)
The Black Fives (2014)
The Undocumented (2011)
Banished (2007)
Freedom Summer (2006)
Without a Pass (1991)
I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (2004)
MLK Boulevard: The Concrete Dream (2003)
Two Towns of Jasper (2002)
Making Peace: The Underground Railroad (1996)
Making Peace: Turn-A-Lot Around (1996)
Declarations: The Spiritual Deficit and The American Dream (1993)
In Search of Our Fathers (1992)
Executive Producer:
Old South
Bible Quiz
More Than A Month
A Son’s Sacrifice and Bronx Princess
Marco Williams is an award winning filmmaker whose films unmask and uncover the complexities of the human condition.
“To challenge the status quo, to challenge an audience’s comfort level, to interrogate and investigate our collective psyche as humans. A viewer of several of my films once told me: “you make films about the stories we prefer to keep hidden.”
I have been honored and recognized for this effort. Awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the “Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor” in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill”, a George Foster Peabody Award, the Beacon Award, the Alfred I duPont Silver Baton, the Pan African Film Festival Outstanding Documentary Award, the Full Frame Documentary Festival Spectrum Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists First Place Salute to Excellence Award.
Credits include: Crafting an Echo (2018), Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt (2017), Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2017), The Black Fives (2014), The Undocumented (2013), Inside the New Black Panthers (2009), Banished (2007), Freedom Summer (2006), I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education (2004), MLK Boulevard: The Concrete Dream (2003), Two Towns of Jasper (2002), Making Peace: Rebuilding our Communities (1996), Declarations: The Spiritual Deficit and The American Dream (1993), In Search of Our Fathers (1992), From Harlem to Harvard (1982).
I am currently a Professor at Northwestern University in the School of Communication, the Department of Radio, Film and Television and a Professor in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty, I was a professor at for twenty-years at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Undergraduate Department of Film and Television. I have also taught at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking, Duke University and The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
I received a B.A. from Harvard University, in Visual and Environmental Studies, a Master of Arts degree from UCLA in Afro-American Studies and a Master of Fine Arts also from UCLA in their Producer’s Program.
To get in contact, please contact me at hiptruthwilliams@gmail.com.
Marco Williams:
I AM A STORYTELLER, AN EDUCATOR, AND A MENTOR
I have always wanted to make a difference. I have tried to fulfill this aspiration by creating, teaching, and consulting.
My creative medium has been media film, video, digital. Through these platforms, I have sought to challenge the status quo, to interrogate and investigate our collective psyche as Americans. This has been the foundation of my aspirations to make a difference.
Since 1979, I have been making documentary films that examine themes of injustice. My films are about America; about whom we have been; who we are; who we aspire to be. I have committed myself to creating a record of America by trying to deal with the topics that challenge our sense of who we are and our sense of justice, but more importantly, to make films that will have sustained impact. As a viewer of several of my films told me: you make films about the stories we prefer to keep hidden.
Yes, I try to tell the stories we’d rather not tell.
My films have examined the residue of slavery through various prisms. Two Towns of Jasper is a response to a racially motivated murder. Banished looks at the legacy of American racial cleansing. MLK Blvd: The Concrete Dream considers the meaning of naming a street for Martin Luther King Jr., and Freedom Summer is a film about the death of three civil rights workers in Mississippi.
I have tackled the issue of race in America because as an artist I seek to explore the difficult– and race is generally a subject that people would rather not talk about, much less think about. In a sense, to investigate or interrogate race invariably creates an environment, a scenario fraught with risk. In this way, my films create a dynamic of opposition to the norm and status quo.
This was true even at the start of my career when my films were explicitly personal– From Harlem to Harvard and In Search of Our Fathers each seed the personal into my work. Both were told from a first person point of view. The success of In Search of Our Fathers gave me the opportunity to tell stories differently.
Aesthetically, I am working very hard to not be confined by my approach to telling stories. I strive to push against any single notion or expectation that others have of me or my work. All creative people must evolve to survive.
For example, my early films document horrors and atrocities. Now, I want my work to consider solutions, as well as prospects and mechanisms for change.
TEACHING — SEEKING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
https://www.kcet.org/shows/fine-cut/why-should-you-consider-film-school-if-you-want-to-make-films
I have been teaching filmmaking for twenty-five years. I have been associated with seven different film programs in my career. I learned filmmaking at Harvard. I received a MFA from UCLA in their Producer’s Program. I have taught at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, New York University, and Northwestern University in Qatar.
Teaching extends to other forms of mentoring and consulting; I help to develop the next generation of storytellers and society changers.
I HAVE CONSULTED ON AWARD WINNING DOCUMENTARIES:
https://www.bakarisellersdocumentary.com/by Emily Harrold
Old South by Danielle Beverly
https://www.facebook.com/93QueenFilm/ by Paula Eiselt
Bible Quiz by Nicole Teeny
More Than a Month by Shukree Tilghman
A Son’s Sacrifice and Bronx Princess by Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed

![]() Marco Williams Professor
Northwestern University in Evanston
School of Communication
Department of Radio Film and Television
Core Faculty, The MFA in Documentary Media Program
847-491-2375
http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/departments/rtf/
Professor in Residence, Department of Communication Northwestern University in Qatar
Education: MA UCLA; MFA, UCLA |
Review/Television; A Search for Father: Success Without Reward
Duke University Q&A
Oprah Winfrey
“Once in a while, there’s a documentary that comes along that really strikes a chord… Two Towns of Jasper is raw, it is provocative and controversial… Marco Williams and Whitney Dow knew that there was a story to be uncovered in Jasper, not just about the town, but about America, and ultimately, each one of us… Their film is a raw and uncensored look at racism in our country of America.”
– Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show 1/21/03
PBS Documentary: ‘Two Towns of Jasper’
A Racially Motivated Murder Leads to a Uniquely Reported Documentary
Marco Williams’ Bone-Deep Sense of Fairness
MARCO WILLIAMS IS USING HIS FILM AND GAMES TO CROSS NEW BORDERS
Life Without Father: A Film Re-examines Family Roles
Black Autobiographical Documentary, by Jim Lane
International Documentary Association: Playback: marco-williams-search-our-fathers
Interview on The State of Things
A Search for Father: Success Without Reward
Murders That Matter
Logline Murders that Matter documents an African American, Muslim, mother, who, in the aftermath of her youngest son’s murder, vows to save all the other sons, on both sides of…
Crafting An Echo
“Now I know what others have suffered from me, for I burn with the love of my own self.” The Greek myth of Narcissus is a fitting choice for Andonis…
Lonnie Holley: The Truth of The Dirt
Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt is an intimate portrait of a self-taught African American visual artist and musical performer from Birmingham, Alabama. Everything that Lonnie encounters is imbued…
The Undocumented
The Undocumented is a feature length cinema verite documentary that exposes a little known consequence of United States immigration policy. Since 1998 more than 2000 dead bodies and skeletal remains…
Banished
Banished vividly recovers the too-quickly forgotten history of racial cleansing in America when thousands of African Americans were driven from their homes and communities by violent racist white mobs. The…
Two Towns of Jasper
In 1998 in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd, Jr., a black man was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white men. The town was forever…
In Search of Our Fathers
“I was twenty-four years old, the first time I learned my fathers name.” IN SEARCH OF OUR FATHERS documents the filmmaker’s seven year journey to find and to meet the…
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer revisits Mississippi during the Summer of 1964 when three civil rights workers were murdered. The documentary examines the impact of their death on the eventual passage of the…
MLK Boulevard: The Concrete Dream
In the United States, there are more than 680 boulevards, avenues, streets, drives, and lanes in towns, counties, and cities named in honor of the slain Civil Rights leader,…
I Sit Where I Want
Made for Viacom’s “N” network as 50th anniversary special for the historic Brown v. Board of Education court ruling, the film tracks 15 students at a Buffalo, NY high school…
Inside The New Black Panthers
INSIDE THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS examines this organization as it seeks to redefine the black struggle for equality and demand liberation from what it sees as white supremacy. By contrasting…
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