Filmmakers

Matthew has been involved with filmmaking since he was thirteen, when he made his first 16-mm film with a Bell & Howell wind-up camera. He holds a B.A. from San Francisco State College and an M.F.A. from UCLA in film production. He has worked as a still photographer, been a freelance screenwriter, worked on an organic farm, driven a rig cross-country, and spent five seasons with a traveling carnival show.

As a screenwriter, he co-wrote the scripts for two Hollywood feature films, Deadly Blessing (1981) and The Forgotten (1989), as well as other scripts that were optioned but never saw the light of day. While teaching at the University of Miami in 1990, he moved into documentary production with Crimes of Hate, a film produced in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League as a training tool for police departments in recognizing and combating hate crimes. He is currently an associate professor of film production at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where he has taught since 1994.

Matt and Cornelia Barr came up with the idea of the Unheard Voices Project in 2006 while completing the documentary Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of an American Fishing Town.