MATTHAEUS SZUMANSKI
FILMMAKER / EDUCATOR
Matthaeus Szumanski is a writer-director, editor, and educator originally from Denmark, now based in Los Angeles.
DIRECTOR
Directing actors, framing images, marshaling colors, textures, and shapes, choreographing movement, sculpting in time, using contrasts in scale, facial expressions, light, and words to tell human stories that zero in on the gray areas where attention focuses, certainty evaporates, and transformation becomes possible. Matthaeus has directed 33 short narrative films, of which one is in the permanent collection of the American Museum of the Moving Image..
SCREENWRITER
A screenplay is not a finished work of art. It is a recipe and a shopping list; a set of instructions for completing a work of art that must evoke the finished piece in the reader’s imagination, give clear instructions, say what must be said, and suggest what must be left unsaid. A screenplay creates a coherent world, and a set of moments within that world that tell a clear and specific story. The world must be fully imagined, far beyond the events the audience sees, yet rendered with the most muscular and delicate minimalism.
Read “The House of Women”, finalist in the FINAL DRAFT Screenplay Competition.
FILM EDITOR
Editing seems dauntingly technical, a sea of buttons and keyframes and precisely time coded instructions - but it is in many ways the soul of filmmaking. A tiny shift in the length of a pause can change an actor’s line from sincere to insincere; the juxtaposition of shots and/or music can change the cause of an action, or shift the tone of a moment from tragic to comedic. Editing, most of all the film crafts, is about revealing the meaning of what happens on screen, removing extraneous elements, focusing our attention, creating consequence, flow, and resonance.
EDUCATOR
(Student Work)
Teaching film is a joy. You harness the student’s desire to express themself and to be seen (nearly universal impulses) and then you create ways for the student to show off and delight themself and others which require them incidentally to learn the many component skills, technologies, history, and art. In the process, they learn universal skills like project management, collaboration, communication, presentation, and pacing, as well as the more specific arts and crafts of cinema. They discover their own unique voices, confidence, and identity.
Featured student work by former students Alan Dennis and Jeremy Mowery.
INDUSTRIAL and INSTITUTIONAL MESSAGING
A manufacturer needs to communicate the design features of a new product; a talent manager seeks to teach aspiring actors how to navigate the business of entertainment; doctors strive to improve outcomes for diabetes patients.
Video is a ubiquitous, elegant, concise, and deeply engaging way to reach a specifically targeted audience, and to communicate essential information. Helping clients to identify their essential messages and translate them elegantly for this medium requires openness, diplomacy, flexibility, finesse, and a profound empathic engagement with their target audiences.
