Award-winning filmmaker, Errol Webber is a Candidate for Congress in California’s 37th Congressional District. Webber emigrated from Jamaica to the U.S., with his family in 2002, at 15 years old. He had dreams of being a commercial airline pilot. All that changed in 2003, when he learned broadcast video at church in Baltimore. He became fascinated by the ability to shape how one views the world through video.
Webber studied Film at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where, as a freshman, he opened his own photography and video production business out of his college dorm room. Upon graduating in 2008, Webber shot a documentary film in Africa – Music By Prudence – about a group of tenacious Zimbabwean Afro-fusion musicians with disabilities. Music By Prudence won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2010.
Webber has since been commissioned to produce or shoot documentary and narrative films for educational institutions and non-profits. His documentary film work explores topics such as: healthcare, education, the justice system, and human rights.
The decade-long, coming-of-age documentary film, American Promise explores the nuances of public vs. private education in New York. Webber captured personal stories of two black adolescent boys overcoming their own educational challenges, and the great lengths parents go to afford their children the best education possible. American Promise won the Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Webber moved from Baltimore to Los Angeles in the summer of 2014. He was commissioned by the University of Washington, Tacoma to co-produce an academic documentary, Love & Solidarity. The film chronicles key U.S. Labor Movements, how it shaped resulting labor laws, and its effect on human rights.
As a documentary filmmaker, Webber has traveled the world, and has seen first-hand what happens to entire societies when government officials, drunk on power, forsake their own people. These same unsettling parallels can be drawn when we observe the declining quality of life in some of California’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, due to years of failed policies.
Errol Webber is uniquely positioned to use his skill as a documentary filmmaker to make policy ideas palatable for the American voter, many of whom have been civically disengaged from politics. After more than a decade of community engagement and programming through his social issue-driven documentary film work, award-winning Los Angeles Film Producer, Errol Webber continues to give back to the nation that gave him the invaluable opportunity to succeed, by running for Congress.
Great article! Well written and interesting. I enjoyed reading it.