Kathy Conkwright

Assistant Professor

Kathy Conkwright

Degree Information

  • MFA, CUNY Hunter College (2015)
  • BA, Loyola University New Orleans (1990)

Biography

Kathy Conkwright is an international, national & regional award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator. Her work has broadcast on American public and network television and screened at numerous film festivals, conferences, and community/university events worldwide. She has also taught at the post-secondary level for the past twenty years receiving her MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College in New York City in 2015.   Currently Conkwright serves as a full-time tenure tra...

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Kathy Conkwright is an international, national & regional award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator. Her work has broadcast on American public and network television and screened at numerous film festivals, conferences, and community/university events worldwide. She has also taught at the post-secondary level for the past twenty years receiving her MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College in New York City in 2015.   Currently Conkwright serves as a full-time tenure track Assistant Professor in the Video and Film Production Program at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) where she teaches film production, history and theory courses. Prior to joining MTSU she directed the Creative Documentary program at European Film College in Ebeltoft, Denmark, where she taught foundational and advanced documentary filmmaking, programmed a popular documentary screening series and mentored more than 250 student film productions. Student work she has overseen has been selected for multiple film festivals and screenings including The New Yorker Documentary, Seoul (South Korea) International Women’s Film Festival and the Cannes Shorts program.   Before teaching, Conkwright spent a decade in New York working with Bill Moyers and Frontline at PBS, Turning Point at ABC, and Dateline at NBC. Programs she received international and national honors including two Columbia duPont Batons, two national Emmy Awards and the National Headliner and Overseas Press Award.  She also worked as a staff producer/director at Nashville Public Television (NPT) where she won four Regional Emmys, two national Gracies, and two National Educational Telecommunication Association Awards for her long-form documentary and public affairs work.   She and her filmmaking partner, Mary Makley, founded MakeWright Films in 2007. Together they have made eight films including Southern Belle, an ITVS co-production and Training for Freedom in partnership with Miami University (Oxford, OH). Currently she is developing a feature length documentary with a group of MTSU students in collaboration with Universal Music Group/Nashville. The film project examines the legacy of George Strait through the lens of his fans. She is also in development for a short, animated documentary about the unlikely friendship between two young people brought together by a bullying incident; and a teleplay for a limited dramatic/comedy series about teaching filmmaking at a non-traditional, non-hierarchal international folk high school in Denmark while witnessing America’s alarming transformation from abroad.  

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