Darryl Wharton

Advisor, Screenwriter, Director, and professor Darryl Wharton-Rigby hails from a family of poets and storytellers. With more than 20 years in film, television, and theatre he embodies a wealth of knowledge in story development, pre-production, production, and post-production. Darryl has his MFA from Chapman University and taught film for Morgan State University's Screenwriting and Animation Program. He has earned awards and grants from the Urbanworld Film Festival, the Maryland State Arts Council, The Painted Bride Arts Center, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, and the Caucus Foundation. His work has screened around the United States, France, and Australia. His feature film Detention, received numerous honors and awards, including "Best Director" at the Urbanworld Film Festival and the "Audience Award" at the Atlanta Film and Video Festival. Wharton-Rigby worked as a writer for the critically acclaimed television series, Homicide: Life On The Street. After being hired by MTV to write a script based on the Japanese manga TokyoTribe 2, he moved to Japan and taught English in a small town in Fukushima. He is working on a documentary, Don Doko Don: The Yamakiya Taiko Club Story, about a group of young drummers displaced due to high levels of radiation in their community from the failed nuclear plant. He splits his time between Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Japan. He credits his wife and three children as his ultimate muse.