Darius Quinn joined Marvinetta Woodley Penn on All Stories Matter to talk about growing up creative in Kalamazoo, the path into filmmaking, what it means to show up for your community’s artists, and where he’s headed.
Darius Quinn is born and raised in Kalamazoo, something people tend to find surprising. He gets Chicago a lot, sometimes New York. But he has been here his whole life, writing and drawing through a quiet high school career at Comstock, studying film at Western Michigan University, and quietly building a body of work that draws on everything he has always loved: music, poetry, fashion, drawing. Film turned out to be the vessel that held all of it.
He sits on the board of the Kalamazoo Film Society, which works to bring independent and niche cinema to southwest Michigan audiences. He makes short films. He thinks carefully about everything, his creative process involves a lot of pacing and talking to himself, working through ideas before they’re ready to share. He holds his projects close until they’re done.
What the fellowship made possible
In 2022, Quinn was one of six Black filmmakers selected for Public Media Network’s Black Lens Filmmaker Fellowship, a year-long program that supported the creation and public presentation of original work. His film screened at the culminating event accompanied by a live pianist, the score performed in real time as the audience watched. It was the kind of experience that doesn’t translate to a link, the moment was the point.
Not everyone showed up. People who knew about it, who had been told the date, didn’t come. And then came the requests: where can I see it online?
Quinn isn’t bitter about it, but he is honest. He contrasts that experience with taking a film to Grand Rapids, where an audience of strangers gave him an audience choice award simply because they came to support the work with no personal connection required, no prior relationship with the filmmaker. That kind of unconditional community support for the arts is something he wishes Kalamazoo cultivated more.
The Black Lens Filmmaker Fellowship did not continue after its funding ended. The six filmmakers it supported, and the work it produced, remain.
What he’s building toward
Quinn wants to make features. Stage plays. Work that takes the time it takes and says what it needs to say. He is wary of client work, the kind that uses up your creative energy for someone else’s vision and leaves nothing for your own. He is protective of his projects and deliberate about what he puts out.
Near the end of the conversation, host Marvinetta Woodley Penn offered a thought about what public media does for young people: it gives them a real project, a real deadline, real accountability, and the experience of seeing their own work in front of an audience. It builds grit. Quinn agreed. He took a film production class in high school that he didn’t know at the time would matter. It did.
