In the mid-70s, her father became the first Black general manager of a TV station in the country when the Federal Communications Commission suspended the local station at Jackson, Mississippi for racist practices and mandated that it be run by a Black group. It was there, growing up in Mississippi, that Erika Dilday understood the importance of having a “diversity of voices within the narrative.”

Only a year ago, she was the first Black person to be appointed Executive Director of American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) and Executive Producer of its staple, award-winning documentary series POV on PBS and America ReFramed on WORLD Channel. But her work as a journalist and documentarian has been a long and arduous struggle so that “people in marginalized communities have some control over their stories, not have them told for them.”

“For far too long, the stories of other communities are told by the same certain people. [This] is just not something that’s going to lead to a level of intimacy and understanding – and a lot of it, has to do with the gatekeepers,” she pointed out. “Until the people who are in charge are people who also have a diverse view, you are not going to be able to change things.”

It was this idea that compelled her to take on a leadership role: “As much as I love making films, I really wanted to be in a position that I could help control the opportunity for other people to come in and tell stories, to advance stories that don’t normally get heard.”

Connecting rather than isolating communities is what motivates Dilday. “We’re too busy saying ‘oh, you said the wrong thing, you did the wrong thing.’ People are afraid to ask questions. The first idea is to educate as to why; to give people chances to make amends and hopefully involve them productively moving our society forward.”

“I hate the cancel culture – everything is a learning moment,” she emphasized, then added: “It’s like our prison system. It’s supposed to be punishment and rehabilitation – [although] all we do is punish. We have no interest in rehabilitation, and I feel that is what cancel culture is. It’s about punishment. [But] we need everybody on board!”

Opening dialogue among diverse societies is not just a national issue for her. There are a lot of festivals around the globe that show documentaries that never make it to the IDFA (International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam) or Cannes. “We need to be able to go out and find them,” she determined. “Find the filmmakers who might be telling interesting stories but are going to show them in a small regional festival, whether it’s in the United States or somewhere across the world. It’s up to us to go to them, it’s not up to them to get to us!”

Having AmDoc representatives scout festivals around the country and the world is exactly what Dilday has in mind when she says, “we’ve got to be more proactive.” Doing that has to be paired with “building relationships, making sure we go past the traditional sources.” She feels adamant about visiting Australia and New Zealand this year in search of indigenous films. “We often think – oh, that’s a long way to go – but you know what? I can get on a plane!” she laughed.

Her caring and holistic worldview spills into every area to which Dilday turns her attention. “It’s hard to put a value on someone else’s pain,” she said referring to a mental health documentary series project that had to be suspended for ethical reasons. “As a society, we just do not appreciate the importance of mental health, the pain of mental health issues because we can’t see [them] as well, and I think it’s one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made.”

“We know that whenever someone had a difficult experience and talks about it, there’s a part of reliving it. What are we doing for communities of which we are asking [to relive difficult situations] for the sake of making a film?” she questioned. “I have this theory that [film production] should be like a campground – you must leave communities better than you found them,” she went on. “I think we owe more to communities and protagonists.”

“A lot of journalistic ethics were developed in the 1950s by a group of very privileged men who created this idea that it is ‘ethical’ to do certain things because it was most convenient for them,” she explained. “If someone is giving you their time, inviting you into their home, taking hours out of their day… there should be some sort of compensation. If they were management consultants, we wouldn’t think it was strange. So why is it that in some way compensating people for sharing their time or their stories automatically corrupts the process? I don’t believe that to be true.”

Changing the landscape of how documentaries are made and how filmmakers and communities are treated will take a massive effort. “We’ve got to get big directors, major streamers, different organizations on board to try and say, ‘we’ve got to change the narrative of how we do things.’ We have to open up dialogue, we have to be supportive of filmmakers who are authentically telling stories, and we can’t just say it, we have to show that we are doing it.”

She added: “I feel there are too many statements and not enough action, and so my question is, what are we going to do?” Opening dialogue is the first step.

“In my mind and my experience, until we have the ability to create opportunities for real dialogue that can lead to action, we are never going to move ahead as a diverse nation, as a diverse world,” she reiterated. “You can’t understand someone with whom you haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and listen to or talk to. To me, documentary is the best way to do that.”