Maya Churi
South Pasadena, CA
Maya Churi has been working in film and new media since 1996. For three years she served as the Associate Editor of indieWIRE, an online independent film news service and as a content producer at Sticky Networks. After graduating from New York University she worked as the assistant to the director Abel Ferrara on two films and then worked in theatrical film distribution at Artistic License Films. There she oversaw the release of such films as the Academy Award nominated Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern, DA Pennebaker’s Moon Over Broadway and a Merchant Ivory Retrospective among others. She is a Macdowell Fellow and a Helena Rubenstein Scholar. She has been nominated for a Rockefeller Fellowship. Her work has been written up in numerous publications including: Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, USA Today, Salon.com, Filmmaker Magazine and Digital Coast Reporter, among others. She is a cofounder of the company Sparkle Labs.
Letters From Homeroom
Maya Churi
Artist BioLetters From Homeroom is a website about two best friends who are sophomores in high school. Their story unfolds in the letters they pass to each other in class during the day. The film and website consist of seventeen one-minute video segments, audio tracks, as well as the text of the correspondence. Viewers can move in and out of the three different media elements to assemble the complete movie. The site also offers viewers a chance to become a part of the correspondence: in the Bathroom viewers can post their own notes about what is going on in the movie or what their own experiences are. There is also a Lockeroom page, which contains histories of the characters and links to the personal web pages of the main girls that include journal entries that start where the film leaves off. The film has been shown at The Sundance Film Festival, The Streaming Media Festival, The Seoul Net Fest, and in exhibition at La Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, Italy.