Matt Wolf is a filmmaker in New York. His critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary films have played widely in festivals and have been distributed internationally in theaters and on television. Matt’s features include Wild Combination about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, Teenage about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, and Recorder about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years. Matt’s most recent film Spaceship Earth is about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. The film premiered at Sundance, was released by Neon, and is now streaming on Hulu. As producer, Matt’s latest film The Stroll tells the history of New York’s Meatpacking District from the perspective of transgender sex workers who lived and worked there. The film premiered at Sundance, where it won a special jury prize, and will air on HBO in 2023.
Matt has made numerous short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who adopted his younger boyfriend in the early 1980s to obtain equal rights, and HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight. Other shorts include, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, and The Face of AIDS for Time Magazine about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement. His most recent short Another Hayride is about the self-help guru Louise Hay, and was released by the New York Times’ Op-Docs and PBS’ POV series. Matt also directs commercials and content for brands.
In addition to filmmaking, Matt organizes film screenings and public events, and he was the Co-Curator of Film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.