Matt Wolf (filmmaker)

Matt Wolf (born May 11, 1982) is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and producer. His notable films include Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, Teenage, Bayard & Me,^[1] Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Spaceship Earth, and Pee-wee as Himself. In 2010, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.^[2] His films are largely documentaries about "unconventional visionaries" that are shaped by expansive archives.^[3]

Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf at the premiere of Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project during the Montclair Film Festival 2019
Born	(1982-05-11) May 11, 1982 (age 43) San Jose, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Documentarian, producer, film director, artist, writer
Years active	2008–present

Life

Wolf was born in San Jose, California. As a teenager, he was involved with gay activism in the Bay Area. He was the subject of a documentary on queer youth, which he describes as a formative experience that later shaped his approach to documentary filmmaking.

When Wolf was fourteen, he watched Arthur Dong's Licensed to Kill (1997) on PBS. He came out as gay the next day.^[4][5][6]

He attended film school at New York University on a scholarship and has remained in New York City since.

Work

Film

While still at NYU, Wolf worked with the video activist collective Paper Tiger Television, collaborating with queer youth and homeless queer youth on making community-based media.

His first feature documentary, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, is about the avant-garde cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell. His second feature, Teenage, is about the birth of youth culture, based on a book by the British punk author Jon Savage.

In 2019 his documentary about Marion Stokes titled Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project,^[7] premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.^[8]

Wolf was a co-curator of Film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial, developing a program titled "Invisible Monuments."

His two-hour documentary on Biosphere 2 titled Spaceship Earth premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Neon in May 2020.^[9]

Wolf also directs and produces for television, including 2015's HBO Documentary It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise, which premiered at Sundance and was executive produced by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.^[10][11]

In November 2023, Criterion featured Wolf's full filmography on its streaming platform.

In 2025, Wolf's documentary on the life and work of Paul Reubens, titled Pee-Wee as Himself, premiered on the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival.^[12][13] He spent over 40 hours interviewing Reubens, and was given access to the actor's large collection of photographs and video footage. Wolf was unaware that Reubens was battling cancer throughout the production of the doc, which heavily features their contentious struggle over creative control of the project. The film includes a final message from Reubens, recorded the day before his death.

Writing

Wolf's writings on art and culture have been published in Triple Canopy, Aperture, and Flash Art, among others. In 2023 he launched a substack titled "Polari for Dummies."

While working on Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Wolf screened 700 hours of archival footage collected by Stokes. In 2023, he compiled a book titled Input, consisting of hundreds of stills from talk shows, local news, and commercials, with an eye for images that were "mysterious, haunting, bizarre, and beautiful to tell an abstract story about our televisual lives."

Influences and approach

As a teenager, Wolf spent most of his weekends alone, watching films such as Welcome to the Dollhouse at the local independent movie theater. He discovered what’s now called the “new queer cinema” at his local Blockbuster, which by chance stocked Derek Jarman and Todd Haynes films. The public library had Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren compilations. He first discovered David Wojnarowicz on the Internet, by searching for “gay art.” Through David's work, Wolf first found a viable intersection between politics and art.

While at NYU, Wolf became dissatisfied with his filmmaking education, finding it too conventional and industry-oriented. He instead chose to study avant-garde cinema and video art, hoping to "internalize the conventions" within his own filmmaking. He also became involved with the art world: writing criticism for magazines, socializing mostly with visual artists, and working for a painter after graduation. In multiple interviews, Wolf credits his senior year professor Kelly Reichardt as a pivotal role model for how to be both an artist and a filmmaker. Wolf identifies as an artist.

I was never really interested in “storytelling.” My approach has always been intuitive and led by emotion. I’ve always been interested in larger themes: cultural history, appropriation, television, queer identity, youth culture—all of these different things melded together... I’m a sensitive person, and I get very emotionally involved with my subjects. I have intense relationships with the material I’m working with, and I want to engage with it so that it becomes a part of my life experience.^[6]

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Director	Producer
2008	Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell	Yes	Yes
2014	Teenage	Yes	No
2019	Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project	Yes	No
2020	Spaceship Earth	Yes	Yes
2023	The Stroll	No	Yes
2025	Pee-wee as Himself	Yes	Yes

Short films

Year	Title	Director	Producer
2012	I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard	Yes	Yes
2015	It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise	Yes	No
2016	The Face of AIDS	Yes	No
2017	The Town I Live In	Yes	No
2017	Bayard & Me	Yes	Yes
2021	Another Hayride	Yes	Yes