Alumni Profile: Shari Lynette Carpenter
NEW YORK-BASED WRITER/DIRECTOR WITH A WEALTH OF EXPERIENCE AND STORIES TO TELL
By Robert Delaney
Shari Lynette Carpenter is a writer and director with decades of industry experience working with some of the biggest names in the film industry.
She got her start with legendary director Spike Lee, first as an Office Production Assistant on MO’ BETTER BLUES, and become the script supervisor on films like MALCOLM X, CROOKLYN, and CLOCKERS.
As Shari says, Lee brought her into the fold: “It made something available to me that I never considered being available to me before. I always thought, ‘Films are made in California, people don’t make films in Brooklyn or Harlem!’ All of the sudden, they did”
Over the years she has worked with other stars like Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington, Robert DeNiro, and Kerry Washington.
The vision she had on set led her to becoming an award winning director herself. “I honestly think that being a script supervisor is one of the best training grounds to be a director.”
By being “thrown into the deep end” working for a definitive artist like Spike Lee, she developed a sense of form: “As a script supervisor to me, if you are really good at your job and you are really committed to it, you are constantly thinking about, ‘what’s it going to take for this to cut?’”
Her film, SINCE LISA, was a winner at the Black Filmmaker Hall of Fame, the Black American Cinema Society Festivals, and screened at dozens of other festivals. Her film, KALI’S VIBE, won Jury, Audience and Vision awards at festivals around the world. She has gone on to be a staple industry director.
Today, she is working on the script for TRANSLATE, a TV series grounded in her own past when she was in a relationship with a transgender male. In her words, it’s “the journey of being together on and off for 13 years, meeting someone very early in their transition, and what that experience is like being a partner and having a partner who is trans”
She also wants to speak about the pressing topic of the trans experience: “It is tremendously important. You hear a lot more about trans women than you hear about trans men. So I think that is another thing that makes the story interesting.”
“One of the things I love most about Stowe is that because it is so young, they are constantly adding new things. I love that they are constantly trying to expand it in wonderful and supportive ways for all of the alumni that have come through.”
Shari first brought the script to the September 2017 Stowe Narrative Lab, and developed it further at Stowe’s July 2020 Remote Writers’ Retreat. “It was fantastic because it was the first time I had been very open with people about my experience.”
“One of the things I love most about Stowe is that because it is so young, they are constantly adding new things. I love that they are constantly trying to expand it in wonderful and supportive ways for all of the alumni that have come through.”
You can learn more about Shari and her work at http://www.sharilynettecarpenter.com/
Robert Delany is an Academic Intern with Stowe Story Labs. He graduated in 2020 with an MA in cinema studies from NYU and was a Program Associate for the 2020 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, where he now conducts interviews for their “Filmmaker Spotlight Series”. Robert also writes for Split Tooth Media, an independent film and music publication based in Portland, Oregon. He is currently acting as a researcher on the film ASCO: WITHOUT PERMISSION, directed by Travis Gutierrez Senger and produced by North of Now. He was also an Office Assistant at Senger’s production company, Asa Nisi Masa Films, where he focused on the development of numerous projects. Robert graduated in 2018 with a BS in film and TV from Boston University’s School of Communication. Robert Delany was selected for this academic internship to focus on interviews and other writing for The Story Board, Stowe Story Labs’ bi-monthly newsletter. He will also assist in the establishment of a curated short film platform for Stowe Alumni.
