Nadine Patterson
Nadine M. Patterson is a writer/producer/director and media arts advocate who works at the crossroads of narrative and documentary cinema. She earned her Master of Arts in Filmmaking at the London Film School. For over years in Philadelphia she has operated one of the few African American Women owned Film & TV production and consulting companies, Harmony Image Productions, with her mother Marlene G. Patterson. Their films include MOVING WITH THE DREAMING, ANNA RUSSELL JONES, RELEASE, TANGO MACBETH, WE ARE FREE BECAUSE OF HARRIET TUBMAN, and EDUCATORS TO AFRICA.
While making films she worked to advocate for equity and inclusion of people of color in film and media arts. She was on the Board of the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association 2000 to 2003. She was an advocate for public access programming for 15 years and served as a founding board member of PhillyCAM. She organized three collectives for women in Philadelphia, Know Why (late 1980’s), ImageWeavers (1990’s), and SIFTMedia 215 Collective (2019 to 2024).
From 2020 to 2021 she sat on local and national arts panels to disperse over $2 million in funding to artists. From 2021 to 2022 she has participated in the Committee for the Arts & Culture Coalition, which is striving to make arts funding more representative of communities and diverse working artists in Philadelphia. You can read the section titled “Permanence” on pages 12 to 23, https://issuu.com/raheem621/docs/actf_final_findings .
Her interest in the arts and equity merged when she worked as Outreach Producer for Director Frances McElroy’s documentary BLACK BALLERINA which aired on over 200 PBS Stations across America and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Nadine Patterson has collaborated with major literary, musical, visual and performing artists including Toni Cade Bambara, Brian Anthony Wilson, Lenny Seidman, Ursula Rucker, Warren Oree, Odean Pope, Germaine Ingram, Theodore A. Harris, Emiko & Sumi Tonooka, Ain Gordon, and Sonia Sanchez.
One of the most important things in her work is the preservation of African American culture, and to show how it flows through various cultural fusions that result from collaborations across artforms, languages, geography, and history.
As a writer/director she is producing a dramatic feature RECLAIMING THE LIGHT: THE LIFE & TIMES OF LEWIS LATIMER. Latimer, the son of runaway Africans who were enslaved, serves in the Civil War, survives Jim Crow, builds a family, and creates a legacy as one of the founding fathers of electrical engineering. Her producing team includes Parris Z. Moore (KINYARWANDA), Marthal R. Conley and Marlene G. Patterson. The goal is to enter into production before the end of 2025 and complete post production by the end of 2026. Motto: Be Kind.
