Jennifer Redfearn is an Academy Award nominated documentary director and producer with a filmmaking style that the press has called “engrossing,” “poignant,” “beautifully cinematic” and “intensely human.”
She directed and produced the film, Sun Come Up, about a small island community that is forced to relocate because of rising seas. Sun Come Up was nominated for an Academy Award and the International Documentary Association’s Pare Lorentz Award in 2011. It screened in theaters across the U.S., including the IFC Center in New York and the Sundance Cinema in West Hollywood. It aired on HBO.
Jennifer’s recent film, Tocando la Luz (Touch the Light) premiered at the Full Frame Documentary festival where it won the Charles E. Guggenheim Award. In this intimate character driven story, three blind women from Havana, Cuba confront their heartbreaks and hopes and navigate their profound desires for personal independence.
She was also a field director, consulting producer, and additional camerawoman for the 2015 SXSW film, Landfill Harmonic. Landfill Harmonic follows the Recycled Orchestra, a Paraguayan musical group that plays classical music with instruments made entirely out of trash.
In her client work, Jennifer has directed and produced television documentaries for PBS, the BBC, National Geographic, CNN, and the Discovery Channel. She also produced several short documentaries and multimedia pieces for MediaStorm. Projects she produced and edited at MediaStorm were nominated for the World Press Photo, Anthropographia, and Webby awards in the multimedia and documentary categories.
Jennifer has received a fellowship from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fork Films, Jerome Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the NYSCA, and NYWIFT. Her films have been supported by ITVS, IFP, and the Hot Docs Forum.
She discovered a passion for global storytelling after working around the world for four years – as everything from a roundabout on sheep stations in the Australian outback to a deckhand on boats sailing through the South Pacific.
Jennifer holds a BA from Wellesley College and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.
She founded Red Antelope Films in 2010 with her partner Tim Metzger.