African Film Festival Guest Speaker: Rico Speight

RICO SPEIGHT 

RICO SPEIGHT is an independent producer/director with a diversified career in directing, producing, writing, and editing for film, theater, and television. His documentary, WHO'S GONNA TAKE THE WEIGHT?, on African American and Black South African youth, screened at 52nd Cannes Film Festival in 1999. A sequel production, titled WHERE ARE THEY NOW?, was broadcast nationally on South African Broadcasting Corporation TV (SABC).

Speight’s first documentary, THE PEOPLE UNITED, which profiled the reaction of Boston’s black community to a myriad of racial issues in 1980's Boston was recently acquired by the Criterion Collection.He has worked in several genre and across diverse media platforms; recent theater directing credits include ROBESON AND DUNHAM: ART & ACTIVISM 101, an original multi-media theatrical productionpresented at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York.  He is currently in post-production on a documentary feature titled REDISCOVERING FANON, which looks at racially polarized America through the lens of the writings of prescient psychiatrist/activist Frantz Fanon.  

Speight currently serves as community education consultant for the African Film Festival.