Jason Silverman has worked as a festival director, curator, filmmaker and writer since 1991. He began his career with the Telluride Film Festival, for whom he has continued to work as a consultant for 30 years, and served as a producer on the films Shameless and Olympia. He was a founding staff member and the artistic director of the Taos Talking Picture Festival (1995-2004), an event that brought together scholars, artists, performers and filmmakers to explore the power of media on our culture. Named one of the top ten festivals in the world, the festival included the nation's first teen film conference, a seminar on media activism, screenings on Taos Pueblo and a film program featuring the best in new and classic movies. Guests included Howard Zinn, Susan Sarandon, Elizabeth Taylor, Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu, Jim Hightower and Susan Sarandon. Naomi Klein described the festival as "a genuinely rare meeting point of arts, ideas and politics."

In 2001, Jason co-founded, with Elizabeth Weatherford of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Native Cinema Showcase, which became one of the nation's leading events for indigenous filmmakers, and also featured art installations, performances and lectures. Jason became director of the Cinematheque at Santa Fe's Center for Contemporary Arts in 2004, serving until 2020. The Cinematheque features new films from around the globe, restored classics, ambitious themed series, educational screenings for Santa Fe's public school students and and extensive community partnerships. Guests have included Laurie Anderson, Jim Jarmusch, Al Pacino, John Sayles, Joshua Oppenheimer and Dolores Huerta. Under Jason's leadership, the program expanded attendance from 20,000 to 75,000 patrons. In 2017, the Cinematheque was recognized as one of the nation's top 23 theaters by the Sundance Institute. In 2020, he became co-Executive Director of the Upstate Films in the Hudson Valley, New York.

In 2015, Jason and his creative partner Samba Gadjigo, through their company Galle Ceddo Projects, completed Sembene!, a documentary celebrating the life and work of Africa's most influential filmmaker. After premiering at Sundance and Cannes, the film was released internationally, winning numerous awards, and was named one of New York magazine's top ten films of the year. In order to share the film with African audiences, Samba and Jason created an ambitious outreach program, Sembene Across Africa, which has created more than 400 community screenings in 46 African nations and reached millions through broadcast and free streams. He and Samba partnered with the Film Foundation and the Criterion Collection to restore the entirety of Ousmane Sembene's filmography, with Black Girl and Mandabi already released.

Jason also created programs for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the KiMo Theater, SITE Santa Fe, the Telluride Film Festival, the Santa Fe Opera, Bioneers, El Museo del Barrio in New York City and the Lensic Center for the Arts. With Radius Films, he acquired and oversaw the successful U.S. release of Taika Waititi's Boy. He served as a producer of the 2021 performance film this body is so impermanent ... produced by Bard College and UCLA and directed by Peter Sellars, and was a creator and executive producer of the Covid-era crowd-sourced local show Littleglobe TV, which featured the work of hundreds of Santa Feans. He is founder and editor of the Telluride Film Watch, an annual journal that has been published since 1995; a former lecturer in film and Native Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts; has worked on projects with Chris Eyre, Gary Farmer, John Sayles and Laurie Anderson; and has mentored dozens of emerging filmmakers. He was inducted into the New Mexico Film + TV Hall of Fame in 2020; received a lifetime achievement award from the Santa Fe Film Festival in 2017; and was honored by the City of Santa Fe with "Jason Silverman Day" on November 7, 2019.

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Jason Silverman

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Actor

Producer

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