Louis Massiah

Louis J. Massiah is an American documentary filmmaker, MacArthur prize winner, and community activist who has worked with Philadelphians to develop filmmaking skills and to access media resources in order to record their own stories.[1]

He graduated from Cornell University with a B.A., and from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an M.S. in documentary filmmaking.

He has been an artist-in-residence and on faculty at City College of New York, Princeton University, Ithaca College, the University of Pennsylvania, American University, Haverford College,[2] and most recently at Swarthmore College and Temple University.

He is the founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center, a media arts center providing educational workshops for community groups and emerging independent media makers.[3] Since 2005 he has served as executive producer of Precious Places, a Philadelphia video history project that tells histories of the city's communities as a collection short films conceived and produced by community members.[1][4][5] With funding from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, he also directed a community film history project in 2014 called Muslim Voices of Philadelphia, which explored the history of Philadelphia's diverse Muslim communities (including Sufis, Sunnis, the Nation of Islam, the Ahmadis, the Moorish Science Temple of America, and others) through a series of short films.[6][7]

Discussing the goals and achievement of the Scribe Video Center in a program for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) in 2020, Massiah described it as an effort of "participatory community video" which responded to issues like gentrification and low-income housing shortages while aiming to develop new understandings of place and history, new visions of what the community can be, and new plans for civic engagement. He noted that he had worked with UNICEF to establish similar programs in Haiti and Jamaica.[8]

Awards

Filmography
  • The Bombing of Osage Avenue (producer/director), 1986
  • Power! (co-producer/writer/director), 1990[11]
  • A Nation of Law? (co-producer/writer/director), 1990
  • W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, 1996[12][13]
  • Louise Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words, 1996. A short film about activist Louise Thompson Patterson[14]

References
  1. "Louis Massiah - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  2. Puttieva, Karina. "Filmmaker Louis Massiah: HC's Artist in Residence". Bi-College News. Archived from the original on 2009-07-08. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
  3. "Louis Massiah", HAIKU (The Humanities and the Arts in the Integrated Knowledge University).
  4. City of Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy (April 2018). "Louis Messiah" (PDF). Retrieved November 12, 2020.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. "Precious Places Community History Project". Scribe Video Center. Retrieved 2021-01-21.
  6. "About". Muslim Voices of Philadelphia. 2014-02-19. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  7. admin (2016-11-30). "Muslim Voices of Philadelphia - GRANT". The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  8. Massiah, Louis (March 2020). "Participatory Community Video, Scribe Video Center, and Place by Louis Massiah - FLEFF - Ithaca College". www.ithaca.edu. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  9. "Louis Massiah". Mediaartists.org. Archived from the original on 2004-09-13. Retrieved 2016-12-01.
  10. "2009 Founder's Award recipient". Fleisher Art Memorial. Archived from the original on 2011-07-23. Retrieved 2016-12-02.
  11. "Independent documentary filmmaker Louis Massiah screens film at Duke Law on Jan.24", Duke Law.
  12. Goodman, Walter (1997-02-07). "Pioneer in Sociology, Persevering Fighter for Civil Rights". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-12-02.
  13. W.E.B. Du Bois : A Biography In Four Voices, Scribe Video Center
  14. Louise Alone Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words, Scribe Video Center
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