Spelman College has scored a major coup with the hiring of award-winning filmmaker Shola Lynch as its Diana King Endowed Professor in Film, Filmmaking, Television, and Related Media in the Department of Art and Visual Culture. Lynch will also serve as the director of the documentary film program at the historically Black college in Atlanta.
“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.”
Shola Lynch
The filmmaker is best known for her feature documentary “FREE ANGELA & All Political Prisoners” which received honorable mention at the Tribeca Film Festival and won a NAACP Image Award. She is also known for the Peabody Award winning documentary “CHISHOLM ’72: Unbought & Unbossed.”
“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.”
Lynch recently completed production on an Apple Original film set to release in 2025, Number One on the Call Sheet, that celebrates Black achievement in the film industry and explores what it takes for Black actresses to find success in Hollywood. Lynch is currently working on a documentary about American sprinter and World Record holder Florence Griffith Joyner, or ‘Flo-Jo,’ and has also been tapped to helm an upcoming documentary on the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson.
In addition to her more than 28 years making documentaries, Lynch has a M.A. in American history and public history management from the University of California, Riverside, and a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.
