Maxi Cohen is an award-winning artist and filmmaker based in New York City. Her films, photographs, and multimedia installations have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and others. After graduating from New York University, Cohen directed and produced a weekly television series called “Are You There?” in Cape May, New Jersey, that was cited as the “first example of community interactive television” by the National Cable Television Association. In New York City, she became the director of the first public access facility in the country, as part of the Alternate Media Center. At the same time, she set up the distribution system of Electronic Arts Intermix, now the largest distributor of video art in the world. She co-founded the Independent Feature Project, representing feature filmmakers nationally, and First Run Features, the first company devoted to distributing American independent films.
Her films Joe and Maxi, Seven Women Seven Sins, and South Central Los Angeles: Inside Voices, filmed by African Americans, Latinos and Korean Americans all received numerous accolades and glowing reviews. Cohen has also directed and produced the documentaries The Holy Give Me and executive produced From Shock to Awe. She also produced short films for television and developed series for well-known channels like MTV, BBC, and HBO, among others. She has created several decades-long series of photography, multimedia, and installation works including Specimens from the Amazon, The Art of the Pendulum, Ladies Rooms Around the World, TV Nightscapes, and more.
