Film Forum

Born in Mississippi and raised in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Charles Burnett is an independent filmmaker whose work has been praised for its portrayal of the African-American experience. He wrote, directed, produced, photographed and edited his first feature film, KILLER OF SHEEP, in 1977. His other features include MY BROTHER’S WEDDING, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER, THE GLASS SHIELD, and NAMIBIA: THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION. Burnett also has made several documentaries including AMERICA BECOMING and NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY and short films as The Horse and When It Rains.

Daphne McWilliams began her career in front of the camera as a child actor and behind the camera producing music videos for Blues Traveler, the Notorious B.I.G. and Queen Latifah. In 1995, she produced Spike Lee's Academy Award®-nominated documentary 4 LITTLE GIRLS, about the murder of four African-American girls in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. McWilliams has since produced The Curt Flood Story, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (HBO, 1997), Slavery by Another Name (Sam Pollard, 2012) and MAYNARD (Sam Pollard, 2018). More recently, she produced BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (Jeffrey Wolf, 2019) and HBO’s BLACK ART: IN THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT (Sam Pollard, 2021).  McWilliams’ directorial debut, IN A PERFECT WORLD..., was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2015 LA Film Festival and premiered on Showtime in 2016. Daphne recently wrapped A BOSTON (R)EVOUTION, a documentary about the historic 2021 Boston mayoral election. Daphne is a native New Yorker and the proud mother of her son, Chase. She earned a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology, was the 2018 Susan Tifft Fellow at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, and is currently visiting faculty in the MFA Film program at Vermont College of Fine Arts at CalArts.

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