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Spelman College has hired award-winning filmmaker Shola Lynch as its Diana King Endowed Professor in Film, Filmmaking, Television, and Related Media in its Department of Art and Visual Culture. She will also serve as the college’s director of the documentary film program.
She is best known for the feature documentary “FREE ANGELA & All Political Prisoners,” which won an NAACP Image Award and earned honorable mention at the Tribeca Film Festival. She is also well-known for “CHISHOLM '72: Unbought & Unbossed,” a documentary that won a Peabody Award. Lynch spent more than a decade as the Curator of the Moving Image & Recorded Sound Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library before coming to Spelman. She also joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016.
“It is amazing that Spelman has a documentary film program—it is the only HBCU with one. My job is to build on this wonderful foundation. The goal is to produce students who understand documentary techniques with firm grounding in our filmography, a critical eye, and the craft of storytelling,” said Lynch. “We are bombarded with media, so to have the ability to not only be subject to it but also to create it is powerful. Put another way, I want to produce and empower a legion of Black women storytellers.”
Recently, Lynch finished filming Number One on the Call Sheet, an Apple Original that will be released in 2025 and honors Black accomplishments in the film industry while examining the obstacles faced by Black actresses trying to succeed in Hollywood. Lynch is currently working on a documentary about Florence Griffith Joyner, also known as “Flo-Jo,” an American sprinter and world record holder. Lynch has also been chosen to direct a future documentary about the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson.
Spelman has a long history of embracing the arts. Back in October, the college named its fine arts building after actors LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson. The couple met in 1970 as students at Spelman and Morehouse. Earlier this year, Emmy Award-winning actress Angela Bassett served as the keynote speaker at the Spring 2024 Commencement Ceremony at the college. She was also awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts honorary degree.
A graduate of Columbia University with an M.S. in journalism and the University of California, Riverside, with an M.A. in American history and public history administration, Lynch has over 28 years of experience producing documentaries. Both her academic and professor makes Lynch the perfect person to spearhead the director of the documentary film program at Spelman.
“Shola Lynch is a world-renowned documentarian and archivist, and the Department of Art and Visual Culture is proud and excited to have her join the faculty as the Diana King Endowed Professor in Film, Filmmaking, Television, & Related Media,” said Myra Greene, professor, chair of art & visual culture, and director of the photography program at Spelman. “We know that her research and teachings will have a deep impact on the community of documentarians we are fostering here in the department.”
