Ashley James holds Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degree in Filmmaking and has international film & television credits. He is the co-founder (with Kathryn Golden) of Searchlight Films. Former newspaper journalist, The Hartford Times, (Gannett News Service) Hartford, CT; instructor of cinematography graduate studies in Department of Cinema, San Francisco State University. Former Station Manager of KTOP/Channel 10, Oakland, CA which won 23 national awards for excellence in television programming during his 12-year tenure.
Producer/Director credits include: Kitka and Davka in Concert ~ Old and New World Jewish Music (PBS); Gordon Parks—The Man and His Music a 90-minute television special featuring Parks, Danny Glover and the Oakland (CA) Symphony Orchestra; Bomba – Dancing the Drum, (PBS), a one-hour portrait of the legendary Cepeda Family of Puerto Rico; We Love You Like A Rock – The Dixie Hummingbirds, the feature-length film about the legendary gospel quartet; And Still We Dance(PBS), a one hour portrait of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival and the premiere program for KQED’s From San Francisco series; Home and Almost Free, a one-hour film about the New Horizons Initiative parolee program in the San Francisco Bay Area; KIRK, a portrait of the famed Bay Area kinetic sculptor, Jerome Kirk; American Treasure, and Tchuba Means Rain two films about the Cape Verdean-American community of New England (PBS). Producer/DP for Zenju’s Path & Moments of Illumination, for the Buddhist Broadcasting Network His most recent producer credits include: Producer/DP for Santos – Skin to Skin, a feature portrait of legendary Latin Jazz artist and educator, John Santos.
As Director of Photography: The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane; Journeys of Black Mathematicians (2-part series, PBS) Navajo Math Circles (PBS); Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth To Power, And Then They Came For Us, and Agents Of Change, (PBS); Post Atlantic:The Art of Dewey Crumpler; Dharma Rebel, Zen Brush Mind & Kazuaki Tanahashi – Painting Peace; and a Director of Photography for Academy Award nominee/Best Short Documentary, The Barber from Birmingham. Other Director of Photography credits include: Blacks & Jews (PBS) by Snitow Kaufman Productions; Street Soldiers (PBS) by Avon Kirkland; Crumb, a portrait of cartoonist Robert Crumb, by Terry Zwygoff; Isadora Duncan – Movement From The Soul(PBS); The Color Of Honor; Booker; Ethnic Notions; Cut Loose; and Ancestors In America (PBS) among many other programs for international broadcast and streaming.
Mr. James’ awards include the Prix Bartok Award at the Bilan du Film Ethnographique (France); the American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker award; an Isadora Duncan “Izzy” Dance Award for special achievement in film; five CINE Golden Eagles; two Telly statues and three Pegasus awards for excellence in television programming; screenings at the Kennedy Center Film at Lincoln Center; eleven National Endowment for the Arts production grants; grants from the PBS’s Latino Public Broadcasting and Black Public Media; the National Initiative to Preserve American Dance (NIPAD); the Newark Museum, Paul Robeson Award for best feature documentary and lifetime achievement awards at the San Francisco Black Film Festival and Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame,
James has been a panelist and consultant for the National Endowment for the Humanities (American Studies program), Pennsylvania and Illinois Humanities Councils, the Independent Television Service, and the KQED/Channel 9 Independent Initiative Advisory Board. James also served as three-term president and 15-year board member of the Film Arts Foundation and is a past governor at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Northern California chapter.