Speaking & Filmmaking Seminars

Bridgewater State University; Bridgewater, MA:

Raeshelle Cooke speaking at her film seminar at Bridgewater State University, November 2017

Raeshelle Cooke is an award-winning filmmaker & founder of production company RMC Pictures. Raeshelle writes about the many misadventures of love, with music and spoken word often leading the narratives. She also writes films with social commentary regarding the current state of the country and the errors of human nature in general. Raeshelle thrives with the genre blend. In 2014, Monae’s Room won Best Genre Blend at the Stories by the River film festival, and Best Newcomer at the Shawna Shea Memorial film festival. In 2015 Sometime Around January was nominated for Best Short Film at the Shawna Shea Memorial Film Festival. In 2016, Mt. Washington won a Special Mention award for an Indie Film at the LA Film Awards. Her film Wrath City [2017] makes commentary on Black Lives Matter and police brutality. Her newest film “Woke” [2020] is a fiction, and a new and original take on race relations, set in the year 3000 and using sci-fi elements and more twist endings. “Woke” [2020] has been nominated for Best Sci-Fi twice in 2020, and it was also recognized for “Meritorious Appreciation” at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival in 2021. Raeshelle has screened her films all across the country from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, all over New England, and even internationally in Berlin and Switzerland.

See her portfolio here.

  • The main inspiration behind my films has been music! From hip-hop, soft and alternative rock, to even Japanese music!
  • Other forms of inspiration include: Love, heartbreak, and social issues.
  • People that inspire my writing and directing: Rod Serling, Alfred  Hitchcock and John Hughes.
  • When speaking to other people interested in becoming filmmakers, I dive into how to be inspired to write and direct a film, and then the practical steps and resources it takes to actually shoot, edit and distribute a film; how to actually bring that vision to the screen.
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