Nora Jacobson
Directing
Biography
Nora Jacobson is an award-winning independent filmmaker who writes and directs narrative films as well as documentaries. She is devoted to telling stories of women, place, justice and diversity, and believes that filmmaking can promote social change by provoking meaningful discourse.
Known For
A short documentary profile of the Anthology Film Archives, shot on the eve of the move to the historic 2nd Avenue Courthouse. Staff and patrons are interviewed, and films preserved by Anthology are spotlighted.
Persistence of Vision
The objects found inside the house seemed of little historical importance - two diaries. But taken together, they form a fantastical little story… and so a filmmaker finds herself caught between fiction and memory, believing in impossibilities.
Inventor Crazybrains and the Girl Called Bird
Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie is the first-ever documentary series about Vermont. The six-part film is a collaboration of over four dozen critically acclaimed Vermont filmmakers, led by award-winning filmmaker Nora Jacobson (“Delivered Vacant,” “My Mother’s Early Lovers,” “Nothing Like Dreaming”). Sponsors include the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Community Foundation, Vermont Humanities Council, Bay and Paul Foundation, John M. Bissell Foundation, Green Valley Media, National Life of Vermont Foundation, and the Vermont Country Store. Our advisors are well-known historians, educators, curators, authors, artists, politicians, and activists.
Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie
This award-winning documentary chronicles 8 years of housing wars in Hoboken, NJ, a mile-square city across the river from Manhattan. It features a real life cast of long time residents, newly arrived yuppies, tenant organizers, real estate developers, immigrants from around the world and the wackiest mayor in America.
Delivered Vacant
A young woman explores her mother's past and uncovers a secret at the heart of her family's history. Based on an autobiographical memoir, the film suggests that the truth--no matter how painful--provides a path to redemption.
My Mother's Early Lovers
After tragedy strikes, acclaimed poet Ruth Stone retreated to the margins of the literary world, working tirelessly to provide for her children, and transforming her intense grief into poetry, using simple, startling language.
Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind
A recently divorced woman is downsizing. Her adopted Korean daughter is helping her pack. When a treasured Korean cultural item is broken, the woman travels to New York's Koreatown to see if she can get it fixed. An adventure awaits her.
The Hanji Box
A man fires up a propane torch. He sends its flame up tubes of metal. The raging heat produces resonant, ringing tones in a harmony of pure sound. Sonny Gale is a scavenger, outlaw and fire artist. He lives stealthily, in an abandoned factory at the edge of town, waiting for someone who never arrives. Into his life comes Emma.
Nothing Like Dreaming
A home movie of Norwich, Vermont