Elena Mateus (she/her)
elenamateuscreative@gmail.com
Past clients + partners include:
About
When I first stepped foot onto a prison yard, my stomach was doing backflips. My palms were sweating. The only thought I had in my head was, “This looks just like The Shawshank Redemption.”
I began volunteering at San Quentin State Prison in 2017 to edit their newspaper, The San Quentin News. And after a couple of weekly trips inside, my fears melted away. I had no need to fear. In fact, the men who are a part of San Quentin News are some of the most diligent, thoughtful reporters I’ve worked with.
I realized that the stories I had seen and heard were not fully reflective of reality. I eventually felt more fear walking around Berkeley at night versus walking through the prison yard. My goal is to use emotion-driven storytelling to show people’s humanity. And to facilitate the sort of transformation that I experienced behind bars.
“In short, I build creative solutions that bring people and perspectives together.”
I graduated from UC Berkeley summa cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 2020. I received a BA in Media Studies with a minor in Journalism.
My video work has been displayed all around, including at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, 2019 BAMFA Film Festival, and more. I created many of these films in just one week as a part of the world’s biggest student film festival, Campus Movie Fest. I’ve worked in radio hosting an evening news show, ran social media for D1 sports teams, and produced short-form videos with hour-long turnarounds. And of course, I continue to edit the San Quentin News from inside of San Quentin State Prison.
In my last position with FWD.us as the Storyteller in Residence, I drove public engagement with immigration and criminal justice reform issues by managing the I Am An Immigrant Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I crafted over 45 narratives and over 60 graphics in this role, helped secure new partners including Walmart and NPR, and created GIFs, Reels, and Facebook frames for the campaign’s first time.
Currently, I am the Event Coordinator at the Kapor Center for Social Impact where I coordinate events for partners including the Obama Foundation, Microsoft, Google, Meta, the White House Department of Education, the ACLU and more.
No matter my current title, I am always freelancing and making videos. If you’re interested in branded video storytelling, please do not hesitate to reach out!
Press
“To give people a voice who don’t traditionally have one is very important to me. In my junior year, I took a class called ‘San Quentin News Editing,’ and I’ve travelled to San Quentin State Prison for about two years now. We go in once or twice a week — they have a monthly newspaper and a quarterly magazine — and we help edit the content and interview folks on the outside, because it’s far more difficult for the men inside to do so. The men in San Quentin News share their knowledge with me, and I technically do the same — but I’ve learned more from them than from anyone else in my life.
I joke that it’s always hard to leave the newsroom, which is surprising considering that I was totally freaked out during my first time there. I tried to understand where those scared feelings were coming from. I couldn’t pinpoint any single thing except for my media consumption. But truly, I feel safer inside the prison than I do walking around Berkeley at night. Few people truly see prisons up close and personal — it’s even difficult to tour a prison. There are gaps between what happens inside, who these people are and what the public thinks. We’ve got work to do around how we think about and view incarcerated people. We bring ‘criminals’ into our homes on TV screens in a way that is comfortable and reassures us of our own dignity — in a way that reduces those incarcerated to just their name and their crime in a lower-thirds title. We view them from outside. Not to mention, there’s a disproportionate amount of black men and violence shown in the media.
When I visit San Quentin, it’s obvious to me that some people don’t belong there. At the very least, not anymore. One person who I work with inside asked me what I wanted to do career-wise and I started to talk about my frustrations with the criminal justice system. He stopped me and told me that they’re all angry as well, but that I need to be passionate about something positive; I can’t be driven by resentment or hatred. I think that piece of advice speaks volumes about the type of growth and wisdom I’ve found behind bars.”
The Daily Californian Article, Also featured on Berkeley Arts + Design
UC Berkeley student to take DACA documentary to Tribeca Film Festival
BY SYDNEY RODOSEVICH | STAFF — LAST UPDATED APRIL 26, 2018
On September 5, 2017, President Donald Trump announced his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. About the same time, Campus Movie Fest came to UC Berkeley and loaned students filming equipment for seven days. The stars aligned, and second year Elena Mateus decided to make a documentary short to bring awareness, not only to the political issue but also to the individuals it affects.
First, however, she needed to find a subject for her film.
“I know it’s kind of a risky thing to ask for somebody, potentially an undocumented student, to come forward with their story,” Mateus said. But she soon found fourth year Oscar Valencia, another UC Berkeley student who she had met when she was a security monitor and he was a resident assistant. Valencia was hesitant at first, but he decided to join the project.
The short film, titled “An American Dreamer: Oscar Valencia,” features Valencia talking about his family, his experience as a “Dreamer” and his time as a college student. The film is raw and honest, showing just shots of Valencia talking and b-roll of Berkeley, using only Valencia’s charisma to drive the video.
“I think my main goal was to bring [the repeal of DACA] close to home to people because even if you’re not undocumented, it still affects people and lives around you that you might have no idea about,” Mateus said when asked about her goals for the documentary.
The film accomplishes this goal, turning the repeal of DACA from a political act to an act affecting someone just like you. The film shows its audience not only the political effects but also the real emotions that come with being an immigrant –– Valencia goes from openly emotional about his family and his own personal struggles in America to heatedly passionate when questioning how the government could punish children for being brought into the country.
“An American Dreamer” won the Tribeca Campus Docs Grand Prize at the Campus Movie Fest. Mateus’ film will be one of the eight to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival out of a pool of potential student films from all across the country.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting it,” Mateus said, “but I’m so grateful, it’s so surreal.”
Mateus has been working on journalistic videos since her high school days, and she says she aspires to be a documentarian. Her winning piece is a short-form documentary, a film medium that she loves but has mixed feelings about.
“I enjoy long-form documentaries, but for the sake of how today’s media operates, I feel like you can reach a lot of people when they are shorter,” Mateus said. “That’s not to say that two minutes and 30 seconds can be representative of someone’s experience or life or struggle, but I think to reach as many people as possible, shorter, for me personally, right now, especially being in college, is more doable.”
Though her own film is only five minutes long, it is able to reach the heart of the issue without needing to go into too much detail.
Mateus will fly out to present her film and speak on a panel about her work April 28, though this may not be the last time she’ll see it on the big screen.
“I was talking to a professor, and she was like ‘you should submit it to more competitions,’ and I was like ‘yeah,’ ” Mateus said. “But I don’t know, it feels kind of cocky after we’ve already won something. But honestly the visibility and getting people to like see the film is so much more important.”
As for what’s next for Mateus, she says she wants to keep learning and to keep making content that will raise awareness for people and issues that may not be getting the attention they deserve.
“I want to do this so badly, and there’s such a need for this, in my opinion, that I would be a fool to not do it,” Mateus said.
While Mateus is the one flying out for the festival, she wants to make it known that the documentary was not a solo effort.
“I also wanted to really say how grateful I am for Oscar. He deserves all the credit and praise and everything,” Mateus said. “He was so brave in sharing his story, especially with the political climate right now. I want to make sure he knows how grateful I am for his honesty and vulnerability with me. All I did was press record and did some editing. It’s all him; he deserves that recognition because what he did was far more difficult than what I did.”
CAMPUS MOVIE FEST + TRIBECA: TRIBECA CAMPUS DOCS
Tribeca teamed up with Campus Movie Fest, the world's largest student film festival, where students across the country made short docs. The best from each campus event were viewed by a jury who selected the top eight films to screen at Tribeca.
An American Dreamer: Oscar Valencia (Directed by Elena Mateus, UC Berkeley)
An American Dreamer documents Oscar Valencia as he tells the story of his journey to become a citizen in a place that does not always seems to want to accept him.
