Donald Matos got his start as a film producer at Columbia Pictures, where he developed motion picture projects under the auspices of David Puttnam, Academy Award-winning producer of Chariots of Fire and The Killing Fields. Donald pitched MacArthur genius grant recipient Charles Burnett’s feature project To Sleep with Anger, which eventually starred Danny Glover.

Donald is shooting the pilot for his own outrageous TV-online talk-sketch comedy-variety show, which is a larger-than-life comic circus hosted by a modern day Charlie Chaplin.

Donald is also working on turning his two recent screenplays, Angels of Gold and No Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, into feature films.

Angels of Gold, a comedy-of-errors heist caper, received very favorbale coverage at a major film company and is currently being considered there with a cast of stars. The story is based on true events in Donald’s life. It is about an incorrigible schemer and his ex-flame who instigate a gold heist involving very dangerous professionals that unravels into an outrageous quest for love, wealth, and redemption.

No Father, Son, or Holy Ghost is an urban drama that was selected by The Sundance Institute for the final round of its Screenwriters Lab. An Academy Award-nominated actor has already offered to play a supporting role in the project. The story is an urban drama about a father who overcomes his sense of failure as a man when he tries to save his runaway sons from a life on the streets. This is a personal story drawn from Donald’s life experience as a Puerto Rican-Italian growing up in a turbulent family on the East Coast.

Donald is currently writing a spy comedy with great franchise potential, as he was a spy and is now a comedian and the owner of a McDonald’s.

Furthermore, as Donald has multiple personality disorder, when he thinks he is asleep, Donald is also writing a novel entitled Confessions of a Fast Food Educator, which he will turn into a screenplay and a feature film. The story is about his outrageous experiences as a school director fighting for his students and the spirit of education.

Donald is Founder and CEO of his own film, television, and Internet production company, One-Cinema, Inc. He is also Founder and CEO of The Institute for New Cinema and its non-profit Cultural Center.

Donald has won awards in screenwriting and filmmaking, including the prestigious FOCUS Award for his film The Other Side. His work has been recognized by such notable organizations as the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Sundance Institute, the American Film Institute, the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and the FOCUS Awards. He was trained as a director by Delia Salvi, one of Lee Strasberg’s most respected disciples and an active member of the famed Actors Studio.

Donald has a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. in Film Production from UCLA.

Donald’s cinematic influences are: Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, Jean Renoir, Francois Truffaut, Vittorio De Sica, Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Andrzej Wajda, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Zhang Yimou, and Chen Kaige.

Donald admires the lives of: Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Henry David Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Lord David Puttnam, and his mother, Lucille Matos.

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