Jen Marlowe
Directing
Biography
Jen Marlowe is a documentary filmmaker, writer, and the founder of Donkeysaddle Projects. Jen’s films include There Is A Field, Witness Bahrain, Remembering the Gaza War, Rebuilding Hope: Sudan’s Lost Boys Return Home and Darfur Diaries: Message From Home. Her books include I Am Troy Davis, The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker and Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival. Jen identifies first and foremost as a social justice/human rights activist and considers her filming and writing to be tools of her activism. When not found filming, writing, protesting, or engaged in other forms of resistance to state and structural violence, she can be found backpacking on the Pacific Crest Trail or talking aloud to photos of Slider and Sadie, her neph-pup and niece-pup. She has human nieces and nephews (three of them biologically related and is an auntie to many others across the globe) whom she also adores. Jen goes by she/her pronouns and lives and works on unceded Duwamish territory in what is now known as Seattle.
Known For
Leaving thousands dead and homeless, the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region raged for years before the world intervened. This documentary provides a record of the events through the voices of refugees, women and children.
Darfur Diaries: Message from Home
Three 'Lost Boys' return home to South Sudan for the first time since they fled as small children, twenty years ago. 'Rebuilding Hope' is their journey of discovery; of what happened to their families and villages after they fled, of the state of a precarious peace agreement signed in Sudan, and about how they can contribute back to the communities they left behind.
Rebuilding Hope
Severed tells the story of Mohamad Saleh, an 18-year-old from Gaza who has lived through five major assaults on the Gaza Strip. In those attacks, he lost his home, family members, his best friends, and, at the age of 12, his leg. Now living in exile in Egypt, Mohamad struggles to piece together the shattered fragments of his life. Through his eyes, the pain and trauma endured by thousands in Gaza are laid bare, alongside their remarkable strength, resilience, and determination to live.
Severed
In October 2000, a police officer shot and killed unarmed 17-year old Asel Asleh. His story is tragically familiar for Americans, but Asel was not killed in Ferguson, New York City, Atlanta, or Minneapolis. Asel was a Palestinian teenager who was murdered by Israeli police as he participated in a demonstration, calling for an end to the Israeli occupation and settler-colonization.