Jeanne Jordan - filmmaker      
WEST CITY FILMS was founded by Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan. We make a wide range of media, including documentaries, dramas, commericals and interactives. Our work includes independent films and work commissioned by TV networks, corporations, non-profits and other institutions.
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JEANNE JORDAN is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker
who has been making documentaries and dramas for over twenty years.
The Independent said of her resume, "it reads like PBS's greatest hits."

Troublesome Creek: a Midwestern (co-directed with Steven Ascher) won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance, was nominated for an Academy Award and received many other awards. It
was released theatrically and broadcast on PBS The American Experience, the BBC premier documentary strand Storyville, ZDF Germany and many others.

Jordan and Ascher's feature documentary, So Much So Fast premiered at Sundance, was released theatrically to critical acclaim, and has been broadcast on PBS FRONTLINE, BBC Storyville, ZDF Germany, and many other networks around the world.

Jordan was Series Producer of the PBS children's series Postcards from Buster for two seasons, producing a new, international version of the show, nominated for the Outstanding Children's Series Emmy both years.

Among her awards are the Prix Italia, a Peabody award, an International Documentary Association Distinguished Achievement Award and she was nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award. She received the Michael DeBakey Journalism Award and an Insight Award from the National Association of Film and Digital Media Artists.

Jordan edited two films of the groundbreaking civil rights series Eyes on the Prize which won an Emmy Award and the DuPont Columbia Award, and films for American Experience, including season opener, Amelia Earhart and The Wright Stuff. Other editing includes My Mother's Murder for HBO and the Emmy-nominee, A Normal Face for NOVA.

Her dramatic feature work includes several films for American Playhouse, including Noon Wine, Lemon Sky and the Emmy-winning series Concealed Enemies on the trials of Alger Hiss. She edited the bilingual feature, Blue Diner which won the prestigious ALMA award.

In 1988, Jordan and Orlando Bagwell produced Running With Jesse, a chronicle of Jesse Jackson's presidential run for FRONTLINE, which Jordan also edited. She has produced and edited several pieces for The PBS Newshour and for the PBS series Art Close Up, which won an Emmy.

Jordan graduated from the University of Iowa and began her career at Iowa Public Television. She has twice been honored with a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and she was a member of the Breadloaf writers conference. She has taught filmmaking at Harvard and the Art Institute of Boston. She has lectured and held master
classes in several countries, including Tokyo University, the CPB/PBS
Producers Academy and the Aristoteles Workshop in Romania sponsored
by the European network Arte.

She has received grants from the Artists Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the Paul Robeson Foundation and many state humanities and arts councils. Her films have screened at numerous festivals internationally, including the Sydney Film Festival (Audience Award Winner), San Francisco Film Festival (Audience Award Winner) and they are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, Harvard Film Archive, UCLA and the Sundance Collection.

Jordan's writing on films has appeared in Documentary Magazine.

Writing on Jordan's work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Variety, Ecran Total and books including Documentary Storytelling by Sheila Curren Bernard.

Interviews and discussions can be found at The Washington Post,
Indiewire and PBS.