About Nora Jacobson

GOALS & PRACTICE Nora Jacobson is an award-winning independent filmmaker who writes and directs narrative films as well as documentaries. She is devoted to telling stories of women, place, justice and diversity, and believes that filmmaking can promote social change by provoking meaningful discourse.

AWARDS Jacobson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Herb Lockwood Award for Excellence in the Arts, a LEF Moving Image Grant, and numerous other grants from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and the New Jersey Arts Council, where she was named Distinguished Artist of NJ.

SKILLS   Jacobson loves every aspect of the filmmaking process, from development to distribution and works across genres. She is a “hands-on” director: she edits her films and often shoots them. She is a perfectionist who is used to working with small budgets. She has written five feature film scripts, three of which have been produced. She is a great team member, loves collaboration, and enjoys helping others achieve their visions. One of her great pleasures is working with actors, which is why she directs theater when she can.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY Her films include Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind (Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, Reading Film Festival,  Through Women's Eyes Film Festival, Literature in Cinema Film Festival, New Jersey Film Festival, Boston Film Festival and Vermont International Film Festival);  Passion in a Pandemic: Making Opera at Hanover High School (Best Documentary at Made Here Film Festival, Maine International Film Festival); The Hanji Box (Best Narrative Screenplay Eurasian Film Festival; Best Female Protagonist Nevada Women’s Film Festival); Delivered Vacant about gentrification (New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival); My Mother’s Early Lovers about family secrets and domestic violence (Maine Int’l Film Festival Audience Award, Best Independent Film Ajijic Festival de Cine), Nothing Like Dreaming about the stigma of mental illness (Lake Placid Film Forum Best of Fest,) and the collaborative 6-part film Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie, broadcast on PBS, about the history and culture of Vermont.
Links to her films are available upon request.

PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT Jacobson is developing A Peculiar Freedom, a dramatic TV series about people of color in New England in the 19th Century, with Richard Wesley, Bill Hart, Reginald Jackson and Natasha Ngaiza; Lucy Prince Walks to Norwich, a feature film about poet and settler Lucy Terry Prince, (also conceived of as episode 1 in A Peculiar Freedom), co-written by Richard Wesley; and Kiwakw: Winter's Witch,  the re-framed and re-imagined story of Hannah Duston,  co-written by Jesse Bowman Bruchac and Harry Gray.

TEACHING Jacobson has taught filmmaking at Dartmouth College, SUNY Purchase, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Burlington College and The New School for Social Research.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH Jacobson is committed to promoting the distribution of independent film and mentoring a new generation of filmmakers. She is co-founder of White River Indie Films, (www.wrif.org), now in its 16th year, which is devoted to showcasing independent films and supporting regional work. She is the founder of Freedom and Unity TV, a film contest for young filmmakers, now in its 5th year. She was instrumental in helping create the Vermont Archive Movie Project (VAMP (http://vtiff.org/vamp/) to preserve our cinematic heritage, and has served on the Community Council of Vermont PBS.
offthegridproductions.com
thehanjiboxmovie.com 
thevermontmovie.com