Sarah Mueller
Sarah Mueller (co-founder/director) is a cinephile and proud 13+ year resident of Philadelphia. She started her tenure in this city at The University of the Arts, where she graduated in 2006 with a BFA Film and Video Production. Over the last 8 years, Sarah has had the great privilege of working in various alternative education settings, engaging and instructing individuals in urban agriculture, media literacy, digital photography, and identity development, alongside some of our city’s finest organizations, including Project HOME, ArtWell, and YESPhilly. For 5 seasons, she worked production staff for Scribe Video’s Street Movies outdoor summer film series. In 2014, she learned back-of-house theater management as staff at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. This Summer, she will complete her 4th Blackstar Film Festival as film festival staff. Currently, she is employed with Johnny Brenda’s as a Production Coordinator in the venue, as well as, with the City of Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation Department FarmPhilly program, where she teaches urban gardening to youth ages 6-12 in the Germantown area.
Awarded Grants
2018
Window of Opportunity Grant (WOO)
Related grantees
Overview
Sarah Mueller has been selected as a 2019 Emerging Leaders in Art House Cinema Fellow for the Art House Convergence Conference in Utah in January 2019. As a community minded arts programmer and cultural producer, Sarah intends to use this opportunity to represent Philadelphia’s independent film programming community and nurture relationships with others doing the same work across the United States, while gathering knowledge on building art house spaces in the city through her cinéSPEAK project.
2016
Art and Change Grant (ACG)
Related grantees
Overview
Sarah’s neighborhood cinema project, #BoycottTheOscars will take place in Brewerytown, an epicenter of exponentially-advancing gentrification. The screening will bring together longstanding North Philadelphia residents and newcomers – as neighbors – to watch films often overlooked by the Academy of Motion Pictures. Film screenings will be held out of the former Young’s Candy Shop on West Girard Avenue, a location easily accessible by foot and public transportation. The intimate living room style cinema will take place over the course of six months and will create space for both long time and new residents to come together, watch films, and have open and important conversations about gentrification and displacement. Sarah hopes that the series will generate opportunity for positive interaction and genuine relationship building across social divides and teach media criticism and literacy. The project will also train youth in event management and audio/visual technologies, while paying them a modest stipend for their participation.
