Undergraduate Admission
Emerson College
Undergraduate Faculty: Claire Andrade-Watkins
http://admission.emerson.edu/admission/undergraduate/faculty/Claire-Andrade-Watkins.cfm
Department of Visual and Media Arts

Claire Andrade-Watkins 

Fast-forward your life a few years beyond Emerson. Your first short film is "in the can" and ready for festival audiences. Unlike many movies that never get to see the dark of a theater, yours has a real chance to be appreciated by an audience. Why? Because you have a business strategy — a plan for distribution and marketing. That's because you once learned in Business Concepts for Modern Media that filmmaking is more than an art, it's an enterprise.

You are not likely to forget the lessons that Professor Claire Andrade-Watkins imparts in the Business Concepts class. As a long-time filmmaker, producer, and historian, she brings artistic perspective and "street smarts" to the classroom.

Her own 20-year career spans the gamut of filmmaking, from concept to completion to release. So passionate about bringing the voice of the African diaspora to larger audiences, she started her own distribution company, SPIA Media Production ("SPIA" meaning "to look").

"The prevailing thought was, if it's an African film, it must be non-theatrical or educational," she says. So Professor Andrade-Watkins set about finding the commercial niche for such products. Today, SPIA is one of the foremost distributors of films and media from Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, with an emphasis on Cape Verdean-American and Cape Verdean history.

"The biggest challenge to filmmakers is not coming up with the idea, it's coming up with the distribution — getting the rights, the clearances, the audience," she says. "I ask students all the time, 'How do you think strategically to bring your production to fruition?'"

Professor Andrade-Watkins speaks in terms of "challenges," not "problems." She wants her students to feel empowered to overcome those challenges to fulfilling their dreams as filmmakers. She passes on hard-won lessons like how to hold your ground, say "no," and make informed decisions to get work out there.

Her latest film is "Some Kind of Funny 'Porto Rican'?" a documentary about the Cape Verdean community in Providence, R.I., where she grew up.

Claire Andrade-Watkins' Links