MARCO WILLIAMS
Filmmaker Marco Williams has used the documentary as a way of understanding and addressing the extraordinary traumas that we face in this country due to race, ethnicity, gender, and class. His film subjects have been inspired by painful social and historical disjuncture. Williams’ documentary examinations create a salve of understanding in uncovering difficult narratives.
The films demonstrate the healing power of the documentary — the possibility that this art form can encourage empathy and ultimately the correction of past wrongs. Williams looks to the larger role of the documentary to empower audiences to action.
MARCO WILLIAMS
Filmmaker Marco Williams has used the documentary as a way of understanding and addressing the extraordinary traumas that we face in this country due to race, ethnicity, gender, and class. His film subjects have been inspired by painful social and historical disjuncture. Williams’ documentary examinations create a salve of understanding in uncovering difficult narratives.
The films demonstrate the healing power of the documentary — the possibility that this art form can encourage empathy and ultimately the correction of past wrongs. Williams looks to the larger role of the documentary to empower audiences to action.
An award-winning filmmaker, Marco Williams has been nominated three times for the Sundance Film Festival grand jury prize. He has spent his entire film career exploring the question of injustice, worldwide. He is a filmmaker whose films unmask the complexities of the human condition. A reviewer of his films opined: “you make films about the stories we prefer to keep hidden.”
His credits include: Murders that Matter, A New Greenbook, (2022), Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (2021), 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).
Williams films have screened at festivals worldwide, including, Sundance, Berlin, Hot Docs, Toronto, and numerous other festivals around the world. His films have been broadcast in the United States on PBS, History Channel, Nat Geo, and Discovery. Internationally they have screened on the BBC, The CBC, ABC, and in several other countries throughout the world.
His film awards include Guggenheim Fellowship, 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, as well as an Emmy nomination for Tell Them We Are Rising and Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.
Williams is 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, he was a professor at New York University at The Kanbar Institute Tisch School of the Arts, Undergraduate Department of Film and Television for twenty years; additional teaching at The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking, Duke University and The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Williams received a B.A. from Harvard University, in Visual and Environmental Studies. He received a Master of Arts degree from UCLA in Afro-American Studies and a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in their Producer’s Program.
To get in contact, please contact Marco at hiptruthwilliams@gmail.com