Andrew Meieran

Originally from California's Bay Area, Andrew Meieran cultivated his love of historic properties and cinema while studying film, history, and rhetoric at UC Berkeley. During his freshman year, unable to win a spot in the dormitory lottery, he purchased a dilapidated craftsman bungalow from its original 104 year old owner in order to provide himself housing. Meieran spent the duration of his college career pursuing a parallel curriculum: a self-designed, self-taught, experiential program in restoration as made the place a livable environment. He learned the craft of historic rehabilitation from the foundation up, working himself to restore nearly every aspect of the home.

He uncovered layers of history as he worked, revealing not only rotting wood, broken plumbing and outdated systems but a treasure-trove of artifacts. Beneath it all he found original newspapers announcing the start of World War I and tantalizing fragments of life abandoned in the walls from the early part of the 20th Century. The experience led to a love of history and a creative, improvisational approach to the re-re-use of historic structures. He discovered that you could experience living history by inhabiting historic spaces.

That experience never left him. After graduating, he restored hundreds of historic structures and was inspired to create residences, restaurants, bars and even the unique lighting fixtures, furniture and art installations within each location. Meieran created of The Bureau of Moving Pictures to establish a home for thoughtful, provocative film projects and as a means to utilize his design and entrepreneurial talents to bring unique and timely films to a wider audience. The philosophy that permeates Meieran's previous projects has become a guide for his film work: to create socially conscious films that examine the spirit and imagination of the past as a way to overcome the frustrations and hardships of the present. As in his previous hospitality ventures, history serves as a guide—providing a nostalgic look back as a key ingredient in the creation of a hopeful future.

The Bureau's first project, 28 Hotel Rooms, a film by Matt Ross, premiered at Sundance in 2012. It plays out over several years as two lovers (Chris Messina, Marin Ireland) attempt to define themselves and their quixotic relationship over a series of one night stands. Highland Park, The Bureau's second film, centers on the impoverished neighborhood of Highland Park, Michigan. Meieran co-wrote and directed a fictionalized take on life in the town engineered by Henry Ford to be the birthplace of the American Dream. From farmland to capital of the Industrialized World in a mere fifty years, Henry Ford realized his ambitions in Highland Park with the world's best schools, the first community college, the first mile of paved highway, the first public streetlights and the first modern assembly lines. It has however become home to the American Nightmare, becoming the first municipality to remove its streetlights, close its schools entirely and decimate its infrastructure. How the community deals with this change of fortune is the subject of not only the film, but Meieran's philosophy on the revitalization of entire neighborhoods, which he expands upon in the film in slightly irreverent yet poignant ways.

With The Edison in Downtown Los Angeles, Meieran crafted a visionary lounge experience within one of Downtown Los Angeles' once flooded basements in an area thought by many to be lost to civilization. Drawing upon his love of history and a desire to revitalize crumbling historic neighborhoods, Meieran crafted an innovative space that continues to play a pivotal role in the revitalization of Downtown's Historic Core. Awarded the Golden Heart Award in 2011 for his contributions to the neighborhoods within which he works and named a Treasure of Los Angeles in 2012 for his continuing efforts to reimagine and restore numerous nearly forgotten historic structures throughout Los Angeles, Meieran has brought a heightened philosophy to development within economically struggling neighborhoods. Each project was designed to foster 'living history;' drawing inspiration from a community's past to guide creative economic development and build a better future. His projects have created hundreds of new jobs, spurred development in dozens of once abandoned structures, revitalized thousands of residential units and have become integral to the economic diversity of many communities.

Meieran, a Board Member of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the largest local preservation group in the nation, was working closely with the Los Angeles City Council's Bringing Back Broadway initiative to reinvent the once thriving Broadway Corridor in Los Angeles. His acquisition of the legendary Clifton's Cafeteria, once the heart of the Broadway Theater District and the original starting point of Route 66, has become the centerpiece in his strategy to design projects that inspire historically based development as a means of revitalizing troubled neighborhoods.

Tribeca Film