Maxi Cohen is an independent filmmaker and an artist working in photography and video.
Her feature documentaries have played in movie theaters and on television internationally. Television series and programs as well as shorts produced by Maxi have been on network and cable.
Maxi’s first “TV for social change” experiment was a weekly TV series in Cape May, N.J., a town headed for architectural demise. As a result of the show and the subsequent political activity, the town became one of four landmarked towns in the country, forever changing its social, cultural and economic future. Maxi’s first feature documentary, the theatrically released JOE AND MAXI about her relationship with her father, noted for pushing the language of the documentary genre, has been restored (35mm print, NYWIFT Preservation Fund, MoMA). For the feature film SEVEN WOMEN - SEVEN SINS (ZDF) she directed the sin of ANGER. And for the feature documentary SOUTH CENTRAL, LA: INSIDE VOICES (aired on Showtime), she gave camcorders to African-Americans, Latinos and Koreans living in the areas of the LA Riots.
Maxi’s works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and have also shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Museum in New York, and many other museums, venues, and festivals around the world.
Concurrent with art and film projects, two kits that include art, a book, and a pendulum have been published: THE ART OF THE PENDULUM and THE POCKET PENDULUM (Andrews McMeel).
Maxi was a co-founder of the Independent Feature Project and First Run Features (the first company to distribute indie films theatrically), a board member of Women in Film, the first administrator of Electronic Arts Intermix (the preeminent distributor for video art), as well as a participant of a number of historic production/distribution events.
