David M. Massey | Director

David M. Massey is an Academy Award-Nominated filmmaker with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications & Education from Ohio Dominican University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Advanced Film & Television from the American Film Institute. He is the first African American in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for an Oscar in the Live-Action Short Film category with Last Breeze of Summer (1992). Massey is the former co-chair of the Black Association of Documentary Filmmakers, West (BAD-West) He held that position for fourteen years when he was hand-picked by the founder, Saint Clair Bourne, in 2007.

A former radio announcer and television sports reporter for WBNB TV, a CBS affiliate in US Virgin Islands, Massey has produced and directed several films and television shows. Men of Courage is an hour docudrama that received a NAACP Image Award and aired on BET. Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win, a documentary on the 31st December Women’s Movement in Ghana, West Africa, led by the former First Lady of Ghana. Fespaco is a feature documentary narrated by Danny Glover on Africa’s largest and oldest film festival. Nature’s Little Secrets, is a film promoting the people, events and beauty of the British Virgin Islands. Under the UCE Productions banner, Massey produced six short films including Island Song that won the Audience Award at the Pan African Film Festival in 2013. When Justice Isn’t Just, a short documentary distributed by First Run Features in 2015 examined the law enforcement shootings of unarmed African Americans.

Massey’s latest projects are Where We’re From a feature doc that chronicles the LA independent hip hop movement in the early 90s is being distributed by Shout Studios; Not All Lost is a reality-based, celebrity driven PBS television program has aired in over hundred PBS markets; Hinika, in post was photographed in rural Ethiopia, documents the opening of a new hospital and medical school; Medical Racism: The New Apartheid, scrutinizes healthcare in the Black community and Africa; Tip of the Spear, depicts a historical overview of the Congressional Black Caucus and Passage, a live-action film set in 1600 Western Africa is a 2021 Academy considered movie.

Massey has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, including The Martin Ritt Scholarship; the 2011 PBS Innovation Award; the National Education Association “Advancement of Learning Through Broadcasting” award; the Heartland Film Festival’s Crystal Heart. He is also an Eastman Kodak Second Century Honoree. Additionally, Massey is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, serves on the Oscar qualifying festival committee and the Student Academy Awards committee.