USC grad named finalist in major HBO film festival competition for “Talk Black”
Destiny Macon turned her job in the engineering field into a film, which was recently named a finalist in HBO’s Short Film Award.
The Greenville native and University of South Carolina graduate’s film is called “Talk Black,” which a news release from the South Carolina Film Commission described as being about “a timid engineer who develops a wild and expressive split personality to help her speak up to the boy’s club at work.”
The film is one of five finalists for the American Black Film Festival’s annual HBO Short Film Award, which brings a $10,000 grand prize.
The festival will be held in Miami from June 15-19.
The film was created with support from the South Carolina Film Commission and Trident Technical College through their Indie Grant program. The film received $30,000 in funding along with professional production.
“In 2020, when I was writing the script for Talk Black, I had just watched the hilarious and surprising short film Hair Wolf on HBO Max,” Macon said in the news release. “One of my biggest dreams was to have the same trajectory in my own career by receiving an Indie Grant, screening at the American Black Film Festival in Miami and then having my own short film broadcast on HBO Max. Two years later I’m astonished to see that my exact dream is about to happen in real life!”
Matt Storm, South Carolina Film Commissioner, said Macon is a rising star in the film industry.
“From the moment we read her Indie Grants application, it was obvious that she is an extremely talented individual. Talk Black is an incredible short film and we are all pulling for Destiny to bring home the grand prize.”
The movie was shot in Greenville and stars Mystie Smith, Sh’kia Augustin, Dan Thorp, John W. Wright, and Don Henderson Baker. Producers include Brad Jayne, Jonathan Baty, Kisha Imani Cameron, and Smitha Lee.
Previous winners of the American Black Film Festival include Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II), Kiel Adrian Scott (The Bobby Brown Story), Saladin K. Patterson (The Big Bang Theory), and Ben Watkins (Burn Notice).
At USC Macon earned a civil engineering degree. She co-founded South Carolina’s Upstate Filmmaker’s Network and has a screenwriting certificate from the University of California, Los Angeles.
In 2020, she started Hush Girl Productions, LLC, which offers freelance screenwriting and consulting services to writers and media companies. Macon hopes to make a feature film from “Talk Black.”