Not your average rom-com
Photography by Lauren Allen
Cynthia Salzman Mondell was a young college student in 1969 studying journalism. She was in class when a professor told her he had someone he thought she should meet. The guy was a journalist working at The Baltimore Sun.
She never met him.
She would hear of him at least a few more times from different people over the next couple of years. Everyone was so sure they would connect for some reason or another. She only had a name: Allen.
A few years after hearing about Allen for the first time, Cynthia was working for the Maryland Port Authority. A group of staff members from a television network were coming by her office, and she was asked to give them a tour.
By the end of the tour, one of the men had slipped her his phone number. She was flattered, but he wasn’t the one that caught her eye. Another man had piqued her interest. He was mysterious and seemed a bit distant.
She didn’t know he was the mysterious Allen Mondell she was told she had to meet all these years, but she could certainly gather that he was someone to know.
The mystery man is now sitting next to her on a couch in their East Dallas office, and the pair share a last name.
Their office feels like a physical manifestation of their work. Movie theater seats, a large red stiletto-shaped chair, colorful furniture and rooms filled with gadgets and gizmos galore. Their eclectic setup is the home base for Media Projects Inc.
Established in 1978, their nonprofit organization produces and distributes documentary films across the country and in both Europe and Canada. The two, both anchored in a background of journalism, explore stories and topics rooted in the human experience, while packaging them into educational films.
Their documentary, A Reason to Live (2024), a Lone Star Emmy award-winning film about teen and young adult depression and suicide, is one of many projects they’ve created together and has been airing nationwide on PBS for three years.
“I think we work better together than when we work on separate projects,” Cynthia says of their dynamic.
Photography by Lauren Allen
When they do stumble upon creative differences, the final call goes to the person who seems to have a knack for the particular type of problem they are facing. For Cynthia, the “more emotional part” of a project may be what she ultimately rules on, while Allen thinks more visually and often is going after the “intellectual parts,” of a project. If it truly is a toss up, the two have other creatives they trust to help make the final call.
Sometime after the two got married, Cynthia recalls feeling “deathly ill,” and was alarmed not being able to identify the cause.
The deadly illness turned out to just be a pregnancy.
Allen laughs at the memory. Their daughter, Fonya, is now a part of the family business and a full-fledged filmmaker in her own right.
“Since she’s an only child, we took her everywhere,” Cynthia says. “She slept under editing room tables.”
After having Fonya, the two came to East Dallas in 1973, five years before starting Media Projects Inc.
Today, the Media Projects duo is now a trio, working together with their daughter to produce their next round of films. With over 30 films and over 55 awards already under their belts, the pair find the addition of their daughter to the team to be an “exciting” new chapter.
They never would have thought things would pan out this way. Even when starting Media Projects Inc., they simply wanted to create.
“Most of the things that we do, we start and we don’t know what the hell we’re getting into,” Cynthia says. “We just knew we wanted to do films, and then we just needed an entity, and that’s how we did it.”
