Brad Masi

Brad Masi is a writer and filmmaker based in Cleveland, Ohio with a history of work in environmental education, community development, and non-profit management. His film work focuses mostly on topics of regional interest, including natural history, community development, local food systems, ecological sustainability, and collaborative community development. Masi favors an approach to filmmaking that can be described as community-based cinema. The subjects of his film include local heroes who, through hundreds of small acts, create healthier, more connected, and more vibrant places to live. His subjects tend to find bridges across the divides that keep us separated as Americans- ethnically, geographically, and socio-economically. In a media environment saturated by political divisiveness and a constant bi-furcation of topics into oppositional viewpoints, Masi’s films focus on the ways that we can connect across communities to gain leverage over the larger issues and challenges that we face in common.

Masi’s films include: PolyCultures: Food Where We Live (2009) which explores the emergence of a local food movement in the greater Cleveland area, For the Love of Food (2012) which documents Oberlin’s small-town efforts to grow a healthy local food economy, and Network Theory (2013) which documents the power of collaborative economic networks to renew the economy of Appalachian Ohio.

His current projects include Cleveland Growing Strong (2016) which ties together the oral histories of 10 urban farmers in Cleveland in their efforts to renew their neighborhoods through urban agriculture and Moving Places (2017), which looks at the ways that transit choices have historically impacted Cleveland.