Lydia Cornett
Directing
Biography
Lydia Cornett is a documentary filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland. Her films focus on artistic performance, personal histories, and multilayered characters. In 2019, her film Narmin's Birthday was a recipient of the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre, and her film Yves & Variation premiered at BAMcinemaFest. She was the Valentine & Clark Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a CoLab Fellow at UnionDocs. She has worked under filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi (Meru); Brett Story (The Hottest August); and Ken Burns (East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story). As a freelance video producer, she has created content for The New Yorker, Slate Magazine, The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Penguin Random House. Lydia studied History and Film/Video at Princeton University and is a classically trained violinist & composer.
Known For
Six rural American communities are marked as candidates for an unthinkable fate: their land, a burial ground for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, a people’s history of resistance and stewardship emerges through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites.
To Use a Mountain
Caro Comes Out is a queer torture experiment, but also a comedy, but also a short film about coming out to your entire Cuban family.
Caro Comes Out
Three trans opera singers refine their unique vocal talents and contemporize the history of gender-fluid performances in the art form.
Tessitura
Four women in Central Florida establish a unique bond while working with crickets, superworms and roaches on an insect farm in the rural town of LaBelle.
Bug Farm
Residents of a retirement community tell us about the many upsides of getting older. Filmed on the campus of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, featuring residents of the Hebrew Home, RiverWalk, and RiverSpring Assisted Living.
The Blessings of Aging
Every day, concierge Yves Deshommes practices his violin behind the front desk of a Manhattan office building. During the hours outside his shift, Yves’s life is revealed to be equal parts intrepid and inspiring.
Yves & Variation
At a butcher shop in Jeromesville, Ohio, four meat processors situate their labor within their own minds and bodies.
Fleshwork
At the early voting line in Ohio’s most populous county, civic duty is a public performance.