Heineken Affinity Award Profile: Yvonne Welbon

Read all the profiles so far. An initiative through our Tribeca All Access® program, the Affinity Award celebrates emerging and established African-American filmmakers by creating further awareness and dialogue around their work. Learn more here. Along with the Affinity Award winners receiving an initial grant, you can now vote for one filmmaker to win a $20,000 cash award, which will be announced during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Vote here.

Yvonne Welbon's work has shown on numerous networks including IFC, Bravo, the Sundance Channel, BET and HBO, as well as producing and distributing over 20 films, including award-winner Living With Pride: Ruth Ellis@ 100. With a B.A. in history from Vassar, before getting into filmmaking Welbon spent six years in Taipei, Taiwan, where she taught English, learned Mandarin Chinese, and at the age of 23, founded and published a premiere arts magazine. She returned to the States and enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned an M.F.A. with a concentration in film and video and in 2001 a Ph.D. in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University. She is also a graduate of the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. She's currently producing The New Black, a documentary directed by Yoruba Richen and a web based online community building project that also includes a book of essays, a documentary, an archive and a mobile application.

Asked what she wants audiences to get out of his filmmaking, Welbon says…

"My body of work demonstrates my commitment to social equality in media representation, my passion for sharing often little know stories of ordinary and extraordinary people, and my belief that the personal is political. After seeing these stories, ideally audiences participate in creating a cultural presence and public record through their new found knowledge for little known and often neglected histories." VOTE HERE