Each semester, we bring in several emerging scholars and artists from diverse backgrounds who are embarking on careers in communications education. They spend a week during which they give guest lectures, sit in on classes, meet faculty across campus, and give a public presentation on their work.
Independent filmmaker, director, producer, teacher, and advocate, Mason Richards was one of our Diversity Emerging Artists in the fall 2019 semester, after visiting in spring 2019 and having students and faculty enthusiastically invite him to return. Mason has worked as a Broadcast Associate at CBS News in NYC, and in International Sales & Marketing at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles before deciding to pursue his masters in Filmmaking as a way to tell stories in Hollywood that often get overlooked. Mason has an M.F.A. in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts (CAL ARTS), where his award-winning thesis short film The Seawall shot entirely on location in Guyana, South America, was an official selection for the Cannes Film Festival (2011) and the Havana International Film Festival in Cuba (2014), and it has screened at festivals, museums, and universities in the UK, Toronto, and throughout the Caribbean, including the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival (2014).
