Didi Beck* is a Jamaican filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her main creative interests lie in the unseen world: the occult, magic, ghosts, history, myths, love & power dynamics.
photo by Annalise McClure, 2022.
Didi has spent the last 16 years between Los Angeles and Kingston. She was the recipient of the James Bridges Scholarship for Excellence in Directing from 2022 to 2024 at the American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory, the top film school in North America. She graduated with an MFA in Directing in 2024.
Didi also holds a masters degree in journalism and a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the University of Southern California, and was a communication fellow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 2016 – 2018.
She won the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for “Best Profile” in 2017. She made a short documentary earlier that year about the pottery studio at the center of the US's aesthetic craft movement.
Didi has written about Jamaican myths for the national newspaper, the Jamaica Observer. She’s reported on-air about queer feminist pirates in historic Port Royal and argued the nuances of pride for the BBC. She produced two international commercials for Virgin Holidays in Jamaica and Antigua.
Her work as a photographer and artist has been published in the Los Angeles Times, LACMA, The FADER, The FACE, Al Jazeera, The Carvery and Billboard.
In 2020 she won a national film grant and made a short narrative film about a psychic girl living with her ancestral ghosts (High Strangeness), which launched her film career. Since then, she has directed five short films: White Rum for the Widow (2022), Hot Girl Hotline (2023), Smiley Faces (2023), Demonseed (2023), and her AFI thesis film In Foreign (2024).
In Foreign will hit the festival circuit in early 2025.