Biography
Marcia Smith is a writer, filmmaker, and a non-profit executive invested in telling and producing nonfiction stories about racial injustices rooted in African American history and contemporary lived experience.
She has co-written several documentary films with Stanley Nelson, including Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities (2017); Freedom Riders (2010); Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006); and The Murder of Emmett Till (2003).
In 1998, along with Nelson, Smith co-founded Firelight Media, an independent non-profit production company providing artistic and financial support for nonfiction cinema by and for communities of colour. Under her leadership as President, Firelight Media received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. The flagship Documentary Lab program has supported more than 80 emerging filmmakers over the past decade whose works have premiered at festivals such as Sundance and earned Peabody and Emmy awards. Smith will serve as the writer for ‘Creating The New World’, Firelight Media’s upcoming four-hour documentary series about the transatlantic slave trade.
Smith received a Primetime Emmy nomination and won the Writers’ Guild Award in 2003 for best nonfiction writing for her work on The Murder of Emmett Till. In 2016 she was honoured with a Muse Award from New York Women in Film & Television. In 2019 she received the Luminary Award from BlackStar Film Festival. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and sits on the board of directors of Peabody’s East Coast Division and the International Documentary Association (IDA).