Jennifer Maytorena Taylor makes colorful, character-based films about real people with extraordinary stories, often with Spanish-language content and frequently for PBS. Her features and shorts have shown at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, New York Museum of Modern Art, Sundanc Channel, Al Jazeera, and NHK-Japan. Feature documentary and short film credits include New Muslim Cool, Daisy and Max, Paulina, Home Front, Street Knowledge 2 College, Visiting Day. She has also made two short projects collaboratively with Mustafa Davis, Message to Zaire/The Talk, Redneck Muslim.

Jennifer recently presented the world premiere of her new verité feature For the Love of Rutland at the 2020 Hot Docs International Documentary Festival. Featuring cinematography by Jennifer and Mustafa Davis, the film follows three years in the life of a small blue-collar town grappling with deep change in an era of refugee crises, the opioid epidemic, and extreme polarization. Supported by the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, Fork Films, Ford Foundation and several other top funders, For the Love of Rutland was recently named one of the “10 Most Exciting Films” at Hot Docs 2020 by Indiewire and is represented by Annie Roney and Ro*co Films.

Based in San Francisco and born in Los Angeles of Mexican, Sicilian, Irish and English heritage, Jennifer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the Social Documentation MFA program. She is a Sundance Documentary Institute fellow, and has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Journalism, and the MacDowell Colony.

Jarrell has written/produced television & radio features from over 40 countries, on seven continents, and across four oceans. Jarrell’s stories run the spectrum of art, culture, and social issues, building well-researched concepts for national audiences, including ¡Dia de los Muertos! and all eleven seasons of the PBS music concert series, The Caverns Sessions (fka Bluegrass Underground). Further work for PBS includes: Bright Lights Little City, Havana Time Machine, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band & Friends 50th Anniversary, TUBA U: Basso Profundo, and CRANK: Darkness on the Edge of Town, and more. Recognition for Jarrell’s work includes multiple EMMYs, CINE Golden Eagles, PRNDIs, the Edward R. Murrow Award, the PASS, the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award and many more.