Writer, Filmmaker & Director
Spotlight On: Mason Richards, writer, filmmaker and director born in Guyana, South America. Mason is an advocate of inclusion in the film industry and has curated several community outreach programs, providing film courses and workshops to communities in often underrepresented areas of race, gender and ability in the Hollywood film industry.
Mason has developed filmmaking programs for young people who don’t have access to the tools to make films and tell their stories. In his career, he was been able to partner with reputable organizations in LA including BAFTA-LA community outreach, Actors for Autism, Young Storytellers, and The Bill Duke Media Camp to not just teach the craft of filmmaking to young people, but also to empower them to have a voice and be included.
“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”
When approaching storytelling, Mason often lives by the words of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete” –– asserting that a single perspective is the most limiting, and perhaps dangerous, aspect of storytelling. This belief lays the foundation for all of his creative pursuits, be it filmmaking, community building or teaching.
Most recently, Mason has launched a monthly Men’s Forum at NeueHouse Hollywood – a platform for men to speak candidly about what it means to be a man today in the height of #metoo and #timesup. After several casual conversations with male members on the topic of this cultural shift, Mason was inspired to organize. He found it fascinating how diverse the perspectives were among men, ultimately leading for these conversations to grow into an official forum to create a safe space for men to be vulnerable and share experiences around masculinity, race, gender and class.
