With the unrealized desire to be a diplomat, Matthew Kohn has crafted stories from truth and poetry in Mexico, France, Germany, Ukraine, the UK, Iceland, Chad, Uganda, both Sudans, South Africa, and the USA.
Matt is most well-known for directing the feature documentary, CALL IT DEMOCRACY, about the injustice of the Electoral College. The intellectual spine of the film features Matt’s interviews with Jamie Raskin, at the time a law professor at American Univeristy, Federal Judge Richard Poser of Chicago University Law School, and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh, the father of the 25th and 26th constitutional Amendments. Kohn’s crafted a unique exploration of election officials, political theorists, jurists and journalists to examine the one thing that all Americans share - a desire to to improve our voting system.
Call It Democracy does not only feature experts. Matt used the internet to singlehandedly find a small army of indie filmmakers who used his instructions to “man on the street” interviews about what they think happened in the 2000 election. Kohn believes he was the first person to create this kind of web-based collaboration for a film.
Furthermore, Kohn and producer Dan Efram created a model to bring the film to the audiences using self-distribution, activist and educational institutions - exactly what the film business is now doing for many films. The film toured America for two years! However, democracy shouldn’t be a “lucrative niche” but something understood and promoted all over our country instead of derided and disdained.
Matt’s recently released documentary is about a unique garden run by women of color in the Bronx. KELLY STREET GARDEN features the growers and organizers working together with local community to show that “food justice is social justice.”
Matt Kohn’s short SITE SPECIFIC: THE LEGACY OF REGIONAL MODERNISM, about brutalist architect Paul Rudolph, premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival and toured the architectural community for Metropolis magazine's 25th anniversary.
Between waves of the pandemic, Matt directed his first theatrical production, THE LUXE HOTEL. Twenty performers mix Butoh and acting - silently exploring voyeurism, violence and forgiveness. A doc, also called THE LUXE HOTEL, premiered at the NY Indie Theater Film Festival and was curated for the The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP)’s best “theater films” made worldwide during Covid.
With an expanded version of the same team, Kohn is in post-production on fiction feature film that he wrote, directed, and shot during 2022. The film features performers from Ukraine, Argentina, Slovakia, Russia, and recent Afghan refugees-artists.
“Monologue for Everyone” features 17 actors performing a monologue, one after the other, live, at a performance art party. Written and directed by Matt Kohn.
Significant Works:
Shot over 10 trips to Sudan and South Sudan, OUR TALL MAN tells the story former NBA star Manute Bol creating an exemplary school as a way to kickstart a peace movement. This film fuses a personal biography to the story of a genocide and war, with international implications.
Matt shot parts of the Academy Award short listed HBO film HEART OF A DOG for Laurie Anderson. He was the main cameraperson for her live performance projects Delusion and Habeus Corpus (featuring a former Guantanamo Bay detainee).
Matt produced CHARLIE VICTOR ROMEO, the first 3D Feature Film at the Sundance Film Festival. The film re-enacts blackbox recordings of airline disasters to harrowing effect.
Matt has a B.A. in Politics from Brandeis University, with an emphasis in feminist political theory (he studied with notable second wave feminist Susan Okin). He began in TV and features production, switched to editing, and now also has an extensive cinematography catalogue.
From 2006 - 2020, Matt created and hosted Speakeasy Cinema, a secret film series where Matt curated filmmakers to pick a favorite film worthy of an unbridled dialogue. It was awarded the Village Voice’s “Best Date Night” award.
Matt authored LAKE SUCCESS (Soft Skull Press) a book of poetry and led two performance art and experimental music groups.