Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media

JED RIFFE

Interactive Producer/Filmmaker

Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media

510 841-2337

www.jedriffefilms.com

Jed Riffe is an award-winning independent filmmaker and new media producer. He is a Gerbode Fellow, and best known as the producer and director of Ishi, the Last Yahi. The highly acclaimed dramatic documentary won “Best Documentary” awards at eight major national and international film festivals. Ishi, the Last Yahi was released theatrically and acquired for national broadcast by the acclaimed PBS series The American Experience. Since 1976 he has been collaborating with historians, museum curators, Native American scholars, and tribal community members to present their histories and cultures to Indian and non-Indian audiences in film, video and interactive media.

Jed Riffe works in collaboration with digital designer Emrah Oral. Riffe and Oral most recently created “Public Broadcasting in Public Places” four interactive kiosks with 160 minutes of specially edited video content, including an interactive game and touch screen keyboard all programmed in Flash. Public Broadcasting in Public Places won a Gold Plague at the 2007 Chicago International Film Festival’s INTERCOM competition for Best Interactive Visitor’s Center Presentation.

Jed Riffe Films + Electronic Media produces a wide range of new media projects including websites <www.californiadreamseries.org> and enhanced DVDs. Interactive projects previously produced by Jed Riffe include 86 minutes of video elements for a three-station, touch screen, interactive multi-cultural history of California for the Oakland Museum. In 2000, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting selected Riffe to produce an interactive prototype for their TV of Tomorrow Digital Initiative.

Riffe served as one of three executive producers for California and the American Dream, a four-hour, independently produced, nationally broadcast PBS Series. Riffe produced, directed and co-wrote the Series’ opening episode California’s ”Lost” Tribes with co-producer Jack Kohler (Yurok, Hupa, Karuk). Riffe also produced the fourth episode, Ripe for Change with Emiko Omori who also directed. California’s ”Lost” Tribes and Ripe for Change have both been honored with Cine Golden Eagles and other major awards. 

Other documentary films produced and directed by Jed Riffe are Who Owns the Past?, an hour-long, award-winning dramatic documentary on the American Indian struggle for control of their ancestral remains (Independent Lens-PBS). Roots of Beauty, a documentary short film on four generations of Pomo basket weavers (NEH Traveling Exhibit); Rosebud to Dallas, an hour-long documentary on the relocation of American Indians (KERA and KUSD-PBS). Promise and Practice, an hour-long documentary on redlining of inner city neighborhoods (KERA-PBS). And the Cine Golden Eagle award winning film Waiting to Inhale, the first documentary on the movement to legalize cannabis as a medicine. Waiting to Inhale also was honored with these awards “Mejor Documental” - 2007 Festival Internacional de Cine Pisoactivo, Santiago de Chile; "Best Documentary" 2006 Eureka International Film Festival; "Co-Best Documentary Film"

2005 New Jersey Film Festival; and a "Gold Award" at the 2005 Worldfest Houston

Riffe also directed two super16MM and HDCAM shoots for Grotte de Chauvet, a documentary on the oldest cave paintings on earth in the south of France. Riffe line produced Convention, a feature film in HDCAM by Vicente Franco. Riffe also produced an HDCAM shoot on the Rio Negro for Brazilian director Luiz Lobo’s series Amazonia: Mother of Nature.

Riffe is a member of the Film Arts Foundation, Bay Area Video Coalition and the International Documentary Association.