My name is Kayla Naomi Watkins and I am Baltimore-born, Philadelphia-based filmmaker with an expertise in media education and documentary production. 

I work as a Digital Producer for WHYY and have been producing documentaries, shows, and social media edits for WHYY and our affliates for four years. Our shows include awarded collaborations with PBS Origins (In the Margins) and PBS Food (Delishtory). We are building a video presence for the legendary radio show, Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley. I write, I produce, I research archival, I fact check, I edit, I prep deliverables for posting, and I brainstorm thumbnails to get our well researched videos out to millions of viewers. 

I have been obsessed with filmmaking 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 (2026), 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. Bumpa is being submitted to film festivals. 

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 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 am currently in various stages of pre- to post- production for several projects: the fight for mandatory consent education in Philadelphia high schools and an oral history of Malcolm X Park. I am researching for a documentary about my maternal family's immigration from San Fernando, Trinidad to Baltimore due to socio-economic policies of the 1980s in both countries.

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