TALES OF THE TRADE
Professionals reflect on their career paths
André Chung is an award-winning photojournalist and portrait photographer. He has created images for a wide range of clients, and was twice chosen to work on The Official Inaugural Book for President Barack Obama. His photographs are part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African American History and Culture. His work explores people of color and their relationships to each other and the world. He married the girl who encouraged him to pick up a camera, and they live in Columbia, Maryland.
Zoraida Díaz, a Colombian-born photojournalist, covered some of the most impactful Latin American stories of the 80s and 90s for Reuters. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Libération, O Globo, The Guardian, Dagens Nyheter, Clarín, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore.
Keith Mehlinger is Associate Professor of English and Language Arts and Director of the Screenwriting and Animation Program (SWAN) at Morgan State University. A producer/writer/director, he produced episodes of the syndicated series, Story of a People, and a documentary about parents of sons lost to street violence for the Morgan multimedia project Mother's Lament. He is currently completing Black Scholars in America, a documentary about black college professors in the battle against Jim Crow in American letters. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Maryland Film Industry Coalition (MFIC).
Terrence Nelson is an award-winning television and digital content producer with a passion for the stories of those underrepresented in the media. While at TV One, he produced segments for “News One Now,” the only morning news show geared to the interests of the African American community. And he is currently the managing broadcast producer for ESPN’s coverage of the Special Olympics. In 2017, he was named one of Black Enterprise’s “100 BE Modern Men of Distinction,” for extraordinary men of color. Terrence was also honored with “CNN’s iReport Editors Pick” for his coverage of the 2013 government shutdown.
Nina K. Noble is a freelance producer and producing partner of David Simon’s Blown Deadline Productions. With Simon, she produced the HBO series The Wire, which won Directors Guild and Peabody Awards; Treme, which won a Peabody Award; The Corner, which won an Emmy; Generation Kill, Show Me a Hero, and The Deuce. On all her productions, Nina makes community outreach and inclusion a priority, especially focusing on exposing young people to the industry. She is a mentor in the Morgan State University Screenwriting and Animation program (SWAN), and a consultant for Baltimore School for the Arts Film and Visual Storytelling program.
A native of Baltimore, Matt Porterfield has written and directed four feature films, Hamilton (2006), Putty Hill (2011), I Used To Be Darker (2013), and Sollers Point (2018). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard Film Archive, and has screened at Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, The Whitney Biennial, and film festivals such as Sundance, the Berlinale, and SXSW. As a producer, Matt has participated in IFP’s No Borders, Cinemart, FIDLab, the Berlin Coproduction Market and the Venice Production Bridge. He teaches film production and theory at Johns Hopkins University.
Stanley T. Saunders Jr. is a retired broadcaster for WJZ-TV Baltimore. He mentors in Baltimore City Public Schools through his nonprofit program, Baltimore Academy of Sports & Entertainment (B.A.S.E.). He also creates community-impact documentaries, leveraging his more than thirty years telling Baltimore stories. During his forty years in broadcasting, Saunders won a national award as a television sportscaster, political reporting acclaim as a radio newsman, and Who's Who in America status. He is a former Adjunct Professor in Electronic Media & Film at Towson University.
David Simon has been a screenwriter and executive producer for several critically acclaimed television series, including Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), The Wire (2002–08), Treme (2010–13), and The Deuce (2016-19). From 1983 to 1995, he was a crime reporter with the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991) and co-author of The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997). Additional television projects include the miniseries The Corner (2000), Generation Kill (2008), and Show Me a Hero (2015).
Colette Veasey-Cullors is Associate Dean for the Division of Design and Media at MICA. Her photography, which investigates race, class, education and identity, has been exhibited at the California African American Museum, The African American Museum in Philadelphia, The Glassell School of Art, and the Chattanooga African American Museum; and has appeared in numerous publications. She has worked with several community-based organizations, including Communities in Schools, Project Row Houses, Art on Purpose, 901 Arts, and Art Source South Africa.
Kyle Yearwood is an award-winning visual artist from Baltimore who utilizes a combination of photography, videography, and animation to promote new ways of seeing and understanding reality. He graduated from Morgan State University with a degree in Screenwriting and Animation. His work has been exhibited at the National Black Theatre and at the Museum of the African Diaspora, and has been featured in The Baltimore Sun, Afropunk, Essence, and on ABC2 News. He was a 2018 Light City Neighborhood Lights grant recipient.