Sophia Cacciola is a Los-Angeles-based, American filmmaker, artist, and musician.

Career overview

Film

Cacciola is known for her sociopolitical genre feature films that showcase women: '' TEN'',

Magnetic Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles ...

, Blood of the Tribades,

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, and

The Once and Future Smash ''The Once and Future Smash'' is a 2022 mockumentary film directed by Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein. The film tells the story of Mikey Smash ( Michael St. Michaels) and William Mouth ( Bill Weeden), who both played the same football ca ...

. Her films have received festival awards including Boston Underground Film Festival's "Best New England Film", the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival "Best Retro" award, and GenreBlast Film Festival "Best Score". Cacciola was the recipient of the 2018 GenreBlast Film Festival "Les Femmes Du Genre" wrestling belt award for her work in the community, directing, producing, and cinematography and the "Nuclear Pen" award for outstanding screenwriting achievements. She also received the

Lois Weber Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer and director. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the e ...

award at the 2018 Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival. In 2022, Cacciola was the winner of the Innovation in Film award at Nightmares Film Festival along with partner,

Michael J. Epstein Michael J. Epstein (born 1976), is an American filmmaker, musician, writer, and auditory scientist. Epstein has also spoken and written about the impact of local media on the arts, music service gatekeeping, effective social networking, and crowd ...

. Cacciola's filmmaking interests were summarized as, "I love horror because you can be very bold about inserting themes and sociopolitical commentary and still make an entertaining movie. The possibilities are unlimited. You can create a whole world and mythology. Horror fans are incredibly engaged and loyal, so it’s really possible to build an incredible community of like-minded people to work with and to champion the films." Cacciola is currently in development talks with Epic Pictures Group for a witch-themed film, The Caul. In addition to producing and directing films, Cacciola is also a cinematographer, working on narrative film as well as being the head shooter for the Women of Rock Oral History Project. Cacciola also often collaborates with other filmmakers including:

, Izzy Lee, and

Johannes Grenzfurthner Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of '' monochrom'', an international ar ...

Music

Cacciola often blends her film and music work, noting in an interview the book, ''Indie Science Fiction Cinema Today: Conversations with 21st Century Filmmakers'': "I come from a rock'n'roll music background, where an independent DIY ethic is very ingrained, so I've always just charged in where I don't belong and done what I wanted." Cacciola drums and sings for

The Prisoner ''The Prisoner'' is a 1967 British television series about an unnamed British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village, where his captors designate him as Number Six and try to find out why he abruptl ...

-themed "loud, arty, minimalist rock working in the realm of proto-punk/new wave/no wave" band, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, which won a best video award from

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

in 2011.

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

wrote: "the songs deal with troubled states of mind — fear, paranoia, claustrophobia — and the distinct feeling that, yes, they are out to get you. In other words, the harrowing music that marks “The New Number 2’’ is in keeping with the premise of

: a former British secret agent held captive by unseen forces with an unknown agenda in a mysterious village." Her musical career also includes stints with the children's rock band, Space Balloons, garage punks Darling Pet Munkee, and indie ensemble The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library.

Art

She was awarded an art residency at Museumsquartier in

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Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

in autumn 2017. She created ''Nothen für die Tothen'', an interactive music art installation for

Roboexotica Roboexotica (sometimes spelled: ''Roböxotica'') is an annual festival and conference where scientists, researchers, computer experts and artists from all over the world build ''cocktail robots'' and discuss technological innovation, futurology an ...

Politics

Cacciola identifies as a feminist activist. In an article published by

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

she addresses the problem that in today's film industry women can't rise when men overwhelmingly promote other men: "The only way I see any of this changing is to put multiple women at the top with firing power."

Personal life

Cacciola is married to filmmaker, artist, and frequent collaborator,

Selected filmography

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cacciola, Sophia American film directors American film producers American women screenwriters Horror film directors Feminist filmmakers Feminist artists 21st-century American actresses Year of birth missing (living people) American contemporary artists Living people American women film producers