In partnership with YouTube , a global first window.
The Latimer Prize and YouTube are partnered on the annual Documentary, on the recorded Convocation, and on an ongoing slate of laureate-led films released into the global catalog. The partnership is structured to serve the Archive first, and the audience second.
The terms
A multi-year commission, built around the Archive.
The partnership is a multi-year commission covering the annual Documentary, the Convocation recording, and a slate of standalone laureate films developed across the term. YouTube holds global first-window distribution rights. The Prize retains permanent archival rights for deposit with the Smithsonian.
Term
Five years
Renewable. Reviewed by the Board annually.
Window
Global · Day-and-date
The Documentary premieres on YouTube in 190 countries.
Archive
Permanent deposit
Each film enters the Smithsonian after the first window.
Slate
Laureate-led
Standalone films developed by laureates and Fellows.
Editorial independence
The Prize keeps the standard. YouTube keeps the audience.
The partnership is built with explicit editorial firewalls. The choice of laureates, the citations, and the order of the Register belong to the Prize and its Secretariat alone. YouTube has no editorial influence on the Prize, and the Prize has no commercial influence on the YouTube catalogue.
The Prize keeps the standard. The audience keeps the work alive.
Why YouTube
Global reach, permanent shelf, serious documentary house.
The Prize chose YouTube for three reasons: a global first window unmatched in non-fiction, a documentary house with a serious editorial standard, and a willingness to commit to the long, chaptered form the Archive requires. The shelf is permanent. The reach is global. The form is preserved.
The producer's lineage
Reginald Hudlin, a documentary practice of the record.
The Documentary is produced under the creative direction of Reginald Hudlin, whose YouTube non-fiction work has set the standard for how Black cultural memory is preserved on screen. His films do not interpret their subjects so much as commit them to the record, in their own voice, at full length, with the rigor of an archive and the cadence of a feature.
The Black Godfather
Clarence Avant
The 2019 portrait of the executive who shaped six decades of American music, sport, and politics from behind the scenes.
Sidney
Sidney Poitier
The 2022 feature on the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the architect of a new on-screen dignity.
Number One on the Call Sheet
Black Leads in Hollywood
The 2025 two-part series on the Black actors and actresses who carry a production, told in their own words.
The documentary reel
CCClarence Avant
The Black Godfather
2019 , 2h 12m
The portrait of the executive who shaped six decades of American music, sport, and politics from behind the scenes.
That lineage, Avant, Poitier, the call sheet, is the grammar the Latimer Documentary inherits. Every year's film treats the laureates the way Hudlin has treated his subjects before: as principals of the record, photographed with care, interviewed at length, and entered into the permanent collection.
You photograph them the way you would photograph a head of state, because that is what they are.
Continue
Read the Documentary form, or the 
partnership.
The Convocation is also produced in partnership with the , the institutional honor of American invention since 1987.