DIrector and SCreenwriter rel Dowdell
Rel J. Dowdell is an American screenwriter, film director, film producer, and film studies/screenwriting/English educator
Additionally, he has done prominent and extensive interviews with veteran award-winning actors such as Ving Rhames, Keith David, Tony Todd, Roger Guenveur Smith, Larenz Tate, and Mykelti Williamson. Dowdell's first feature film, Train Ride, received substantial critical acclaim.[ Produced with independent financing, the film was acquired and distributed by Sony Pictures in 2005 and was a tremendous financial success. Train Ride was ranked as one of the best American films that year as cited by veteran film critic Gerald Peary of The Boston Phoenix.
Dowdell's latest feature film project is a documentary on history-making African-American collegiate educator Dr. Ira De Augustine Reid, who was one of the first African-Americans to receive tenure at a prestigious predominately northern Caucasian institution in Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania.
WHO IS IRA D. REID?
Ira de Augustine Reid, sociologist, author and professor, was born on July 2, 1901 in Clifton Forge, Virginia. His father, David A. Reid, was a Baptist minister and his mother, Willie A. James, a homemaker. Reid attended mostly private schools in Germantown, Pennsylvania throughout his childhood. When his father accepted a pastoral position in Savannah, Georgia, he spent his high school years at Morehouse Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, and then entered Morehouse College at the age of sixteen.
Director Rel Dowdell reviewed Dr. Reid’s papers at the famed New York City’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The Ira De Augustine Reid papers consist primarily of published and unpublished writings and are divided into personal and professional papers, research notes, writings, Haverford College
In the spring of 2022 Director Rowdell conducted interviews with former Ira Reid Visiting Professor William Williams, former student and mentee Charles Lawrence III and American philosopher, theologian, political activist, Cornel West
