Yvonne Michelle Shirley

Director · Producer · Writer

Newark, New Jersey, USA

Biography

Yvonne Michelle Shirley is a director and producer of narrative and documentary films. She is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts' Graduate Film Program, and is inspired by filmmaking in the social realist tradition. Her short film, Flowers, won Best Short Film in the HBO Short Film Competition at the 2016 American Black Film Festival. Her documentary short, Miasia: The Nature of Experience premiered at the 2017 BlackStar Film Festival. She produced the award winning documentary short, Black 14, directed by Darius Clark Monroe, which most recently screened at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Yvonne is producing and directing the web series, Frame by Frame, for the audio/visual magazine, Topic.com, and is producing a feature length documentary on the artist, Gil Scott-Heron, directed by celebrated documentarian, Orlando Bagwell (Eyes on the Prize, Malcolm X: Make It Plain). She resides in the city of her birth, Newark, NJ, where she is collaborating with local artists to develop The Newarkive, a multimedia artistic archive, centering imagery of and by Newark's African American communities.