Nora Jacobson, Writer/Director/Producer, has 30 years of experience writing, producing and directing documentaries and feature films through her production company, Off the Grid Productions. Some of her films include Delivered Vacant (New York Film Festival, Sundance) the collaborative six-part documentary, Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie (PBS), Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind (Santa Fe Int’l Film Festival, Sebastopol Int’l Film Festival, PBS) Jacobson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Grant, a LEF Foundation grant, NEA, NEH grants and others.
Jacobson has several projects in development, including Kiwakw, a feature-length film about Native Americans and Puritans on the New England frontier, a 2-part documentary about people of color in New England in the 19th Century, a narrative film based on the life of mystic Helena Blavatsky, a narrative film about a an Indian girl and Indigenous boy in Ontario, Canada, and a documentary about pond hockey.
Jacobson has taught filmmaking at Dartmouth College, Burlington College, The New School for Social Research and Ramapo College of New Jersey. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A. in French literature and anthropology) and has an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Jacobson is devoted to telling stories of women, social justice and place, and believes that filmmaking is a creative act that promotes social change by provoking meaningful discourse. She is a co-founder of White River Indie Film, Freedom & Unity TV (a youth film contest), and the Vermont Archive Movie Project (VAMP).
