A block away from Crozer Hospital, Maziha Cooper could hear the protests over its closure from her home. The Last Hospital, the self-taught filmmaker’s third feature film, explores the profound impact of the hospital’s closure on her Chester, Pa., community.

“The Last Hospital shows how fast a city can fall when its lifeline is ripped away,” says Cooper, “through the eyes of a struggling single mother, a street hustler trying to change his life, and a elderly woman clinging to hope.”

Cooper, 24, who works as an environmental technician with Environmental Services (EVS) at the College, has been writing and directing her own projects for years.

“I was 16 years old when I wrote my first short film,” says Cooper, whose interest in filmmaking started with wanting to be an actor. “Growing up in Chester, there were no theater schools or acting. At first, I was just trying to figure, okay, how can I get in a movie?”

Her mom connected her to Amanda Johnson, a woman in the community who attended theater school. She quickly became a mentor to Cooper. 

“[Johnson] did acting classes with me at the Salvation Army,” she says. “I would go every Wednesday, and she would have me doing improvisation and things like that.”

Johnson and her husband, who have their own production company, produced Cooper’s first film, Another Day in Our City. Cooper cast her fellow improv students as actors.

“After that, I just kept on going,” says Cooper.

Many of Cooper’s films focus on pressing social issues. Her ten-episode miniseries Living in Poverty was inspired by losing her brother, Omar Joseph Draughan Jr., to gun violence. Her short film Pressure raises awareness of sexual assault, and another short, Value Your Worth, addresses domestic violence.

The films’ messages seem to be speaking to the Chester community. Longtime Crozer Hospital employees who now find themselves unemployed have been reaching out to Cooper about The Last Hospital.

“They're not actors,” she says, “they just want to be involved because of how it affected them.” 

Cooper is conducting rehearsals for The Last Hospital, while also securing locations and permits for filming. Her team includes a director of photography, a sound person, an editor, and two EVS colleagues, Zaenah Crews and Kellie Freeman, as production managers. She plans to start filming in late September.

Some of Cooper’s earlier films are available on YouTube. Her film The Lick is available on Amazon Prime.