About
Mani Mehrvarz is a filmmaker, multimedia artist, producer, and educator whose work spans documentary filmmaking, experimental media, design, and emerging forms of moving-image storytelling.
Since 2006, his films and media works have been screened and exhibited internationally at film festivals, museums, and art institutions. His practice has explored database cinema, interactive documentary, video installation, media materiality, and nonlinear storytelling. In recent years, his work has increasingly focused on documentary projects centered on public health, community, identity, and lived experience.
Mani holds a Ph.D. in Media Study from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in Intermedia and Video from the Poznań University of Fine Arts in Poland, and a bachelor’s degree in Design and Communication. His doctoral research examined the materiality of media through media archaeology and object-oriented philosophy.
Alongside his creative practice, he has taught filmmaking, documentary production, media history, and media theory at the University at Buffalo and New York University. He is also the founder of Click & Frame, an Austin-based production company focused on documentary and story-driven filmmaking.
Statement
My practice has always moved between forms. I began as a graphic designer, drawn to the precision of visual communication, but over time I became more interested in what could happen when an image was no longer fixed. That shift brought me into fine art, experimental media, installation, and eventually filmmaking.
I came of age alongside the transition from analog to digital media, and that transformation continues to shape the way I think about images and technology. I am interested not only in what media communicates, but also in how the tools, formats, and systems we use influence what can be seen, remembered, and understood.
Over time, storytelling became increasingly central to my work. Earlier projects explored database cinema, interactive structures, video mapping, and nonlinear forms. Filmmaking brought many of these interests together while allowing me to work more deeply with people, lived experience, time, and memory.
My interest in media philosophy and media archaeology remains part of this practice. I often look at earlier technologies and ways of seeing as a way of understanding our digital present. I do not see analog and digital, art and documentary, or technology and human experience as separate territories. They continually shape one another.
Whether I am working with moving images, installation, design, or documentary film, I remain interested in how different forms of media shape the way a story is experienced. Across these different forms, storytelling remains at the center of my practice.
Click and Frame
Click & Frame was founded by Mani Mehrvarz in 2016 with a focus on documentary filmmaking and stories rooted in community, culture, and lived experience.
The company began in Buffalo, New York, while Mani was teaching documentary filmmaking and media at the University at Buffalo. Working closely with artists, nonprofit organizations, and local communities helped shape an approach centered on collaboration, trust, and giving each story the time and attention it requires.
Over the years, Click & Frame expanded from independent documentary projects into a production company working across documentary film, nonprofit storytelling, public health, arts, and community-based projects.
Today, Click & Frame is based in Austin, Texas, and continues to collaborate with organizations, filmmakers, artists, and communities across the country.