Dianah Wynter is a film and television director. Her episodic directing credits include the Showtime series Soul Food, The Parkers, Moesha for Paramount Television, and numerous series for Nickelodeon. Her feature film HappySAD, shot on location in island republic of Trinidad and Tobago, starring Bill Cobbs, won Special Jury Recognition at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival. Her first feature was the romantic thriller Intimate Betrayal, a co-production of Starz and BET. Her ABC television movie Daddy's Girl featured music sensation Lauryn Hill, and garnered Wynter an Emmy nomination for Best Director.
She began her career in the theatre. Her stage credits include the World Premiere of The Interrogation of Nathan Hale at South Coast Repertory; Fences with Samuel L. Jackson at Seattle Repertory Theatre; the award-winning British play Mules at San Francisco's Magic Theatre; To Take Arms with Sanaa Lathan and Hattie Winston at the Tamarind Theatre. She has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Director's Fellowship. She was an executive producer on ESPN's Bearing the Torch: Politics & the Olympics, a documentary chronicling the history of The Olympic Games in the 20th century.
Education
M.F.A. Yale University School of Drama
M.F.A. American Film Institute
B.A. Princeton University
Selected Publications
Books:
Editor, Anatomy of Mass Media. Cognella Publishing
San Diego. 2010. Third Edition 2012. Writer, Chapter, “Media Law: The Measure of Democracy” 2012
Panels & Guest Lectures
University of West Virginia’s Colloquium on The Language of Humor in Literature and Film.
“Black Romantic Comedies & the Status of African American Images at the Box
Office Both Domestic and Abroad” Sept. 2012
Pacific Lutheran University – “The Relativity of Celebrity and the Decline of Intelligence
in the Expansion of Cultural Genocide” October 2009
Broadcast Educators Association Panel “Observations of Audiences Beyond our
Borders: Exhibition Venues & Values in Trinidad & Tobago.” BEA 2009
CSU San Francisco Panel Emerging Trends in Entertainment “Storage Technology in
Digital Location Shooting” March 2008