¡Bricolagista! is a subterranean filmmaking collective run by Sheena Matheiken & Monihan Monihan. Our aim is to create films that obliterate borders, genre and industry convention. We create by any means necessary, utilizing whatever we can get our hands on, with the sole intention of confronting complacency and reconciling paradox.
SHEENA MATHEIKEN
Born in Ireland, raised in India, and based in Brooklyn, Sheena Matheiken is a South Indian filmmaker and interdisciplinary designer. She has produced and directed a slate of shorts and feature films at ¡Bricolagista! with her partner-in-crime, Monihan. ¡Bricolagista’s newest film project, MUGRI is Sheena’s feature-length directorial debut, currently in post-production.
Graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York City, Sheena made the experimental documentary, URBICIDE—a portrait of post-war Sarajevo re-inhabited by its citizenry—shot years after the Yugoslavian war. In 2009, Sheena launched THE UNIFORM PROJECT, a sartorial experiment critiquing the disposable trends of fashion, whereby she challenged herself to wear (and reinvent) the same dress for a whole year. The project went viral, raised over $100k in funds for school uniforms for a progressive children’s school in India, and earned her the honor as one of Elle Magazine’s Women of The Year.
Sheena also spent a decade at creative agencies working in the emerging tech space. She served as the head of experience design at New Lab, an innovation space for hardware tech entrepreneurs in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Prior to that, she was a creative director at establishments such as The Mill, the reputed trans-Atlantic post-production house, and Fake Love, a New York Times owned experiential design studio.
In 2016, Sheena quit her industry career. She has since dedicated her time to unlearning cultural axioms that connect value to productivity. She is now committed full-time to filmmaking and personal projects that challenge calcified notions of work and well-being.
→ matheiken @ bricolagista.com
📸 @matheiken
MONIHAN MONIHAN
The other half of ¡Bricolagista!, Monihan Monihan is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, writer, and ex-professional skateboarder. Bricolagista's debut feature film, LA VOZ DE LOS SILENCIADOS, was Monihan's directorial feature debut and was distributed by Factory25 in 2015. SEA TO SHINING SEA, their second feature film, a satirical pre-apocalyptic documentary hybrid was released by Giant Pictures in 2020.
Monihan was raised in Seattle’s Central District. He was a regular installment in the city’s street kid/punk scene that served as the foundation for the classic documentary film "Streetwise" (in which he made a blink and miss it appearance). By the late-80s, he was sponsored by the legendary H-Street skateboard team and was featured in, and worked on, numerous landmark skate films, most notably "Shackle Me Not", "Hokus Pokus" and Flip’s “Sorry”. Monihan earned a degree in Philosophy & Cultural Studies from University of California, Santa Cruz while concomitantly traveling throughout Europe, Asia, Central America and Africa as a professional skateboarder. Studying abroad, he worked as a roaming research assistant for his renowned academic mentors, Professors Angela Davis, Akasha Hull, Roberto Crespi, and Herman Gray.
By the mid-90s he relocated to Brooklyn and stopped skating professionally to instead make skate films for his former sponsors. He also began working as a film critic for Pseudo.com, the first ever online TV network. Monihan has shot a number of short films, online TV series and music videos for artists ranging from Prince Paul, Jean Grae, Talib Kweli, EDAN, Thunderheist, Greg Nice and Kool Keith to Dead Kids, I.R.O.K., The Dix, MC Paul Barman and Negroes On Ice.
→ monihan @ bricolagista.com
📸 @monihan