Melanie Shatzky(I)

Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy are collaborative artists working at the intersection of documentary and narrative cinema. Their films have screened at the Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, Locarno and Rotterdam film festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Art, Le Musée de la Civilisation, ICA London, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art, and Lincoln Center. They've held fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo, and IFP. They've won numerous awards for their work, and in 2012, they were nominated for a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director. Their feature debut, Francine, starring Academy Award winner Melissa Leo, was called "raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity" by The Hollywood Reporter and was selected as a New York Times Critic's Pick. Their documentary, The Patron Saints, was called "one of the most powerful Canadian documentaries of recent years" by POV Magazine.

Shatzky & Cassidy also maintain an active photography practice and have had their work featured in GUP Magazine, Der Greif, ZEITmagazin, It's Nice That, Wired, FlakPhoto, and Slate, among others. In 2015, The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) invited the duo to guest curate "A Photographer's Eye: Photography & The Poetic Documentary", a special program about the intersection of photography and documentary film, which was showcased at La Cinémathèque Québécoise. Both Shatzky & Cassidy hold an MFA from The School of Visual Arts in NYC.