NON-FICTION
Matt’s feature documentary, CALL IT DEMOCRACY is a response to the 2000 election and the injustice caused by the math 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 unique exploration of election officials, political theorists, jurists and journalists demonstrates the one thing that all Americans share - a desire to improve our voting system.
KELLY STREET GARDEN is a short film about a unique garden run by women of color in the Bronx who are the growers and organizers working together with local community to show that “food justice is social justice.”
SITE SPECIFIC: THE LEGACY OF REGIONAL MODERNISM focuses on preserving the work of brutalist architect Paul Rudolph. It premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival and toured the architectural community for Metropolis magazine's 25th anniversary.
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 WIP film fuses a personal biography to the story of a genocide and war, with international implications.
EDUCATION
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).
“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.
FICTION
Coming in late 2026, two films:
COLORBLIND COLOR CORRECTOR, a fiction feature film that he wrote, directed, and shot. The story is about people who are looking for a missing person… who may or may not be the creator of the film they don’t know they are in. A purposely diverse film featuring actors and movement performers from New York, Vermont, Ukraine, Argentina, Slovakia, Russia, and Afghanistan (see its own page).
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Throughout his documentary career, Kohn made short films including Rosa X-Rays Joe, Freedom Isn’t Free, and Sea Level Inferno. Around the mid-2010s, Kohn began to experiment with theater, language, and Butoh-inspired movement. Monologue for Everyone was first. Then, between waves of the pandemic, Matt directed THE LUXE HOTEL wherein twenty characters explore voyeurism, violence and forgiveness over two six-hour events. A doc about the process premiered at the NY Indie Theater Film Festival and was recognized as one of the best “theater films” worldwide during Covid by The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre.
Subsequent live theater, merging these influences include Homage to Curiosity and Fake Confessions.
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 audience dialogue. It was awarded the Village Voice’s “Best Date Night” award.
Matt authored LAKE SUCCESS (Soft Skull Press) a book of poetry which had a national tour. He led two experimental punk-infused performance art groups, all with slumming pro musicians. He wrote a chapter of “Jews of the Lower East Side” (Clayton Books) about his grandmother who was born on Stanton Street and lived to be 101. On issues of Sudan and political import, he wrote these articles in the Huffington Post.