Matthew has written, directed, edited, & filmed seven documentaries. His work has earned an Oscar nomination, a "Best Writing Award" from the International Documentary Association, & multiple audience & festival awards. His fiction writing has been developed & licensed by X-Men / Wolverine producers & Amazon studios.
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY AMY BERG.
IRISH PRIEST OLIVER O’GRADY ADMITS TO HAVING MOLESTED AND RAPED OVER 25 CHILDREN FROM THE 70s TO EARLY 90S.
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM, 2006
OVER 40 CRITICS “BEST OF” LISTS.
THE HIGHEST RATED DOCUMENTARY OF ALL TIME ON ROTTEN TOMATOES.
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 2006 Winner - Best Documentary LOS ANGELES
FILM FFESTIVAL 2006 WINNER - BEST DOCUMENTARY
NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2006 WINNER - BEST NON-FICTION FILM
SATELLITE AWARDS 2006 WINNER - BEST DOCUMENTARY
WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA WINNER - BEST DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY
creative Producer, editor
The job: Editing over 100 hours of footage into a 1.5 hour film. Choosing the anchor characters, plotting the arc, creating tension and pacing. Filming new interviews and conceiving the resolution, filmed in Rome.
After twenty years, filmmaker Sol Guy confronts the six VHS tapes his father recorded before passing on. The tapes inspire Sol to go on a journey to reunite his broken family. A powerful, loving metaphor of America’s fractured history. Official Website.
creative producer, writer, Editor
The task: shaping over 150 hours of footage into a 1.5 hour film. The process involved filming new interviews of Sol, as the framework for writing a 90-minute narrated story. From that point the filmmakers replaced as much narration as possible with scenes and footage from Sol’s journey.
In this short bio-pic, Mark Ruffalo takes Bernie on a tour of his hometown, Brooklyn New York, to learn how his childhood influenced his life and worldview.
writer-director
After working together on a campaign video, Mark and Matthew teamed up to capture a more personal story. Bernie agreed, but had limited time. So Matthew wrote expository questions to create a framework, arranged a 3 steadicam shoot and pre-staged an interview set nearby to capture the entire film in one take. The ending was unwritten. Matthew predicted Mark would spontaneously say something from the heart, to close the story perfectly. You can be the judge.
Writer, director, editor,
narrator, camera, graphic artist
Produced by Steve Devore, Susan Sarandon, David Arquette, Gina Belafonte, Adrian Grenier, Danny Trejo, Jesse Williams . Starring Bruce Lisker and Reggie Cole.
Featuring: Danny Trejo, Deepak Chopra, Patricia Arquette, Danny Glover, Cynthia Nixon, Ice-T, RZA, Busta Rhymes, Tom Morello, B-Real, Macklemore, Quincy Jones, Q-Tip, Warren G, Chuck D, Brandon Boyd (Incubus).
Crafted in the experiment style of Matthew’s direct-to-camera social media videos. The film tracks the stories of two wrongly-convicted men, who become tour guides to America’s criminal system of justice, punctuated with celebrity pro-tips.
Writer, director, editor,
narrator, camera, graphic artist
Produced by Adrian Grenier and Bert Marcus. Featuring: Susan Sarandon, Woody Harrelson, 50 Cent, Eminem, Freeway Rick Ross, David Simon (Creator of The Wire), Arianna Huffington.Matthew and Adrian Grenier on SWAY. Age-restricted trailer on YouTube.
Best Writing Award, International Documentary Association
Audience Award – Champs-Elysees Film Festival
Audience Award – Newport Beach Film Festival
Matthew conceived the film 10 years prior as a biting how-to, revealing the war-on-drugs to be a terror even worse than the criminal blackmarket itself. He scripted the film first, then acquired footage to replace the script. The editing was the most challenging stage - balancing the satire with a deadly serious topic.
CREATIVE Producer, cinematographer, editor
An HBO Film. A 14-year-old paparazzo becomes famous for snapping photos of Adrian Grenier, who’d become a celebrity for playing a movie star on an HBO series about fame. Written and Directed by Adrian Grenier. Edited by Matthew Cooke and Jim Mol.
Matthew acted as co-director during the development, production and post-production, weaving multiple layered stories and analysis for a deeper look at America’s celebrity and gossip driven culture.
Talkls with Matthew Cooke were co-hosted by David Arquette and hip hop artists Pusha T, Busta Rhymes, and Grey's Anatomy star, Jesse Williams.
The intention of the tour was to re-ignite a national dialogue about the dire need to reform the ongoing crises in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Organized by Christina Arquette, Gina Belafonte and Gravitas Ventures, Survivors Guide to Prison toured colleges, universities, and community centers throughout 2019, culminating with screenings at Google headquarters and for members of congress and staffers in Washington DC.
Speaking Tours
Written by and starring Lorien Haynes. Music by SIA. The film tells the story of a woman’s relationship history beginning in present-day and travels backwards to the start. The feature version was composed of 23 short films directed by 21 women to raise awareness and support for survivors of abuse and assault. Official website.
Editor, creative consultant
story editor, and graphic artist
Matthew’s mission was editing the 21 shorts, reshaping them, and pacing the 21 emotional journeys into a singular narrative. He envisioned and designed journal entries and phone call sequences, to pin and thread the story, and rewrote new portions of the central dialogue between therapist and patient.