Maria Maggenti

The two movies Maggenti created were low-budget and low-profit.[3] The first movie she ever created was The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), which turned out to be successful even with no budget.[3] Maggenti began thinking about the script with the image of a tomboy, who she later realized was based on her first girlfriend. Her movie, Puccini for Beginners (2006), a romantic comedy based on her first big love affair with a man, was filmed in New York City over the span of 18 days, and was released on September 2, 2006. After working on her first few films, Maggenti relocated to Los Angeles, shifting her focus to television writing. In Los Angeles, she wrote for the crime series Without a Trace, which was released in 2002. Maggenti's involvement writing for the Without a Trace was a transition due to the fact that she was working alongside others instead of alone; as she had been doing for ten years. She describes how she, "ultimately came to love it" and "loved her colleagues."[3] While she did enjoy being in the company of "all these smart people," she adds that from a lifestyle point of view, she did not like "the idea that we had to work Monday through Friday every day in an office for 11 straight months."[4] Maggenti also wrote an episode of 90210 and ended up co-producing several other episodes as well.[5] In 2007, she was commissioned by Sundance Film Festival to create a movie for a cell phone. In 2010, Maggenti started to co-write the comedy, Monte Carlo, which was released in 2011.

As a core member of ACT UP New York, an activist group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS, Maggenti co-authored some of the group's educational materials, and has been a participant and documentarian of many of the group's direct actions.[1] As a member of the ACT UP Oral History Project she is one of the people preserving the history of ACT UP and the years of the AIDS pandemic, in filmed interviews with the people who have lived through it.[1][6][7]