My name is Kayla Naomi Watkins and I am Baltimore-born, Philadelphia-based filmmaker with a focus in media education and documentary production. I have been filming since 2009 covering issues that impact Black, brown, poor, and femme people. Autonomous visual representation is one of the key elements of achieving liberation in a world which revolves around the consumption of media. In my work I am visualizing the feeling of being watched, consumed, and repackaged as a Black femme human for others to evaluate without consideration of our inner motivations. My work seeks to go beyond “tolerance” of my humanity into true intra- and inter-communal solidarity. I am filming a world which denies the self determination of people through the use of propaganda and I seek to create alternative, accessible, community centered counter-propaganda. The histories of Black and brown people are oral, visual, kinetic, veiled, and endangered--and I have chosen filmmaking, painting, and media education is my way to interrupt our erasure.

I am preparing my film, Bumpa, a Black femme dance film, for its first work-in-progress screen at Scribe Video Center.  Eternal thanks to my funders, Independence Public Media Fund and Scribe Video Center. I am preparing Bumpa for film submissions later this year. 

More info is posted regularly (at) knwfilms on IG. 

I have filmed/produced/edited/colored films for Precious Places Community History Project,  The University Community Collaborative, Women Organized Against Rape and Philadelphia Student Union. My documentary footage has been included in several internationally shown films, such as Chet Pancake’s Queer Genius and Gabriela Aurazo’s Baobab Flowers. In May 2021, I completed my tenure as an MFA candidate in the Future Faculty Fellowship at Temple University. I am currently in various stages of pre- to post- production for several projects: the fight for mandatory consent education in Philadelphia high schools, Black diaspora dance forms, and an oral history of Malcolm X Park. Alongside other personal work, I am researching for a documentary about my maternal family's immigration from San Fernando, Trinidad to Baltimore due to the socio-economic conditions of the 1980s. I taught Race and Ethnicity in American Cinema as an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and Intro to Film as part of Moore College of Art and Design's inaugural film faculty. 

I work as a writer, color correction artist, cinematographer, archival researcher,  AC/DIT, editor, media educator, and producer for public media and several nonprofit organizations.