Powys Dewhurst is a Canadian-British-Caribbean producer, strategist, and cultural programmer whose work has helped elevate inclusive storytelling across the film, television, and digital media landscape, and aligning filmmaker development events and geekdom. He has led landmark interviews, hybrid keynotes, and legacy panels uniting icons of cinema, academia, and technology. He began as a cameraman and film history nerd. At around 10 years old in Barbados, he nervously prank-called Golden Age Oscar winner Claudette Colbert, then in her 80s and also living on the island. In his 30s, a midnight dinner with recorded interview and deep conversation with his hero Sir Sidney Poitier blossomed into a friendly acquaintanceship-filled with infrequent phone calls and book exchanges on STEM-lasting until Poitier's passing in 2022. Over the last two decades, Powys has built a career at the intersection of media innovation, student development, geek culture, and institutional impact. His work is anchored in the belief that Canada should create more film and television stories that Canadians want to see-stories that resonate both locally and globally. From 2012 to 2015, he produced a national pitch conference presented by Bell Media, tripling submissions through strategic outreach and partnerships. Under his leadership, in-kind and cash prizes rose from $15,000 to $303,000-a 1920% increase in three years. His negotiated prototype pitch deal with Bell Media BravoFACT in 2014 became a model replicated by Hot Docs, ImagiNative, Inside Out, Reel Asian, WIFT-T, DOC Institute, Calgary International Film Festival, and others between 2015 and 2017. In 2014 he customized a Bell Media presented pitch competition to become Canada's first film, TV, and digital media pitch competition to offer visual effects services as a prize-pioneering a new approach to creative mentorship and project development. Since 2012, Powys has led filmmaker development events with university and college professors including Sheridan College and industry institutions and professionals, and he has created creating training bootcamps, jobs, mentorship, internships, event industry screenings, funding, for students at institutions including Sheridan College, York University, Toronto Film School, Centennial College, Trebas Institute, the University of Toronto, and one USC graduate. He was once tasked with travelling to Kenya to mentor a crew on a local tv series. While there he fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing Mount Kilimanjaro on the wide desolate African plains, and listening to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A surrounded by wild animals under a bright starry night. Working at both grassroots and nonprofit levels, he has provided funding, access, and mentorship to emerging creators of all backgrounds-including those living with disabilities. One mentee, Michelle, a Sheridan College star, reportedly became the first Canadian wheelchair user to produce a broadcast documentary series. Another mentee, and his former assistant, successfully earned one of two competitive PhD slots after he lobbied for her admission. In 2019, he initiated a modest program awarding post production sponsorship, in which he travelled with his colleagues to award prizes in England, Toronto, and Ottawa through the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA) Prime Time Conference, where he served as sponsor and juror. Powys has several film, television, and digital media projects since 2010 including for Telefilm Canada, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television Canadian Screen Awards, Toronto Arts Council, Planet In Focus Environmental Film Festival, Regent Park Film Festival, and Female Eye Film Festival. He continues to serve as a juror, panelist, and consultant-offering culturally grounded, story-driven feedback that balances creative ambition with strategic impact. He has curated retrospectives live events on Superman: The Movie (1978), and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)-arranging with the former's director Richard Donner to introduce his movie remotely for his initiative, and the supporting cast of toddler Kal-El and teen Clark Kent (Jeff East), in addition to Oscar winning techs from VFX. He also organized the first panel of all living Star Trek composers, drawing connections between music, science, and storytelling. He's programmed and spoken at screenings for Elton John's Rocketman, Symbol of the Unconquered (Oscar Micheaux), The Intruder (Roger Corman), and Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, among others. He has negotiated, sourced, and/or programmed over 400 speakers-both in person and virtually-including, broadcasters, Oscar winners, comic book artists and writers, technicians, scientists, and collaborated with broadcasters, leaders in Canadian, US, UK, film and Television, professors from Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, York, University of Toronto, University of London, University of Massachusetts, environmentalists, an even a homegrown Canadian astronaut. Notable interviews and guests include: Sir Sidney Poitier (To Sir With Love, A Raisin in the Sun) . Suroosh Alvi (VICE Media co-founder) . Oliver Stone (JFK, Platoon) . Ann Druyan Sagan (Cosmos, NASA) . Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) - first Black director to win an Oscar for an animated feature . Douglas Trumbull (Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey) . Lee Grant (In the Heat of the Night, Shampoo) And created live audience facing events honouring Graeme Ferguson - co-founder of IMAX, and Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck), Alvin Rakoff (A Voyage Round My Father, starring Laurence Olivier), all within the final two years of their lives. Once a filmmaker, his own short film, Delroy Kincaid-funded by the National Film Board of Canada-was selected by the Canadian Government and Cirque du Soleil to represent Canada at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai all year. It has since been broadcast and sold and distributed to public libraries across North America including Toronto Public Library systems. Beyond programming, Powys is a grassroots advisor and cultural advocate. Since 2018 he has raised awareness, by meeting with senior industry leaders, about the virtual nonexistence of Black men in leadership positions across broadcasting, funding agencies, film organizations, festivals, and film schools in Canada over the last century, largely due to unconscious hiring biases. Since 2023 he has begun to see incremental change. Since 2018, he has spoken publicly and privately with institutions to demand lasting change. While incremental shifts have occurred since 2020, he remains committed to accountability, representation, and long-term systemic reform. Yet he has always believed in including everyone in all that he does. As a public speaker, he has addressed audiences at Raindance (UK), the Toronto Black Film Festival, Planet in Focus, Chicago International Children's Film Festival, Female Eye Film Festival. He has been interviewed by CBC's Metro Morning (Andy Barrie, Molly Thomas), and has spoken at the Toronto Public Library, University of Toronto literature class, The Spoke Club, Driftwood Community Centre, and the Toronto District School Board. His career is a testament to the power of community-driven programming, creative mentorship, and the meeting place of pop culture, music, and media. Whether leading pitch bootcamps, co-presenting awards with a University of Toronto president, or curating events with Oscar winners and VFX pioneers, Powys approaches every project with vision, tenacity, and cultural fluency. He has collaborated with CBC, Bell Media, TIFF, eOne, VICE, the NFB, BravoFACT, the Canadian Film Centre, Corus, Hot Docs, Screen Composers Guild, Women in the Directors Chair, the Visual Effects Society and others. Through these partnerships, he has aided careers, championed voices in the arts. He has produced private and public facing programming events and/or filmmaker training at venues including Toronto Reference Library, Hot Docs Cinema/ Hot Docs Film Festival, Ontario Place Cinesphere, Toronto Metropolitan University, The Royal Cinema One of his most meaningful moments remains that midnight interview with Sir Sidney Poitier-an evening of storytelling, quiet humility, and legacy that speaks to what Powys does best: bridge generations, ideas, and creators in ways that matter. He was guest co-host of the geek-forward web show Trek It or Wreck It, which blended commentary and critique on Star Trek: Picard with pop culture analysis. A lifelong student of cinema, Powys grew up projecting 16mm reels, VHS, and Laserdisc for friends and family - often against their will. His childhood heroes included filmmakers like Powell and Pressburger, Perry Henzell, Peter Weir, John Carpenter, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, composers like John Barry and Ennio Morricone, and directors like Robert Wise and John Huston. He gobbled up films like Forbidden Planet, Goodfellas, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Once Upon a Time in the West, Only Angels Have Wings, A Raisin in the Sun, It's a Wonderful Life, Claudine, The Best Years of Our Lives, Fantastic Voyage, The Wizard of Oz, Shane, High Noon, The Ox Bow Incident, Westworld, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Man From Laramie, Winchester '73, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man Called Adam, Sleeping Beauty, The Thing, Shane, Ikiru, The Red Shoes, Pather Panchali, Red River, The Third Man, Tron, Pinocchio, Black Orpheus, Jaws, and The Manchurian Candidate to name a couple-building a cinematic vocabulary rooted in both the classic canon and diasporic storytelling. To this day, he believes cinema is a communal experience-a shared meal worth passing around the table.