Jenni Olson

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Jenni Olson was born October 6, 1962[1] and raised in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Olson is a film exhibition curator, website founder, director, award winning documentary filmmaker, author, historian and producer. Olson co-founded and still writes for PlanetOut.com, described by Offscreen.com as "the largest Queer entertainment website in the U.S.",[2] and also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge.[3]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Olson was educated at the University of Minnesota. In 1986, whilst at the University, Olson founded the Minneapolis/St.Paul Lesbian, Gay, Bi & Transgender Film Festival, initially under the name Lavender Images.[4] Olson was inspired in this move by Vito Russo's book, The Celluloid Closet.[4] She completed her BA in Film Studies in 1990.[1] In 1992 Olson was hired by the company Frameline, and moved to San Francisco to work as guest curator on the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, before being appointed co-director alongside Mark Finch.[4] After three years Olson left this position to co-found the website PlanetOut.com.[5] Olson worked as director of entertainment and e-commerce for the site, as well fulfilling the same roles for Gay.com. She also created the PopcornQ section of the PlanetOut.com website, basing the section on her book The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian & Gay Film and Video.[6][7] In 1997 Olson attended the Sundance Festival, and arranged, along with Morgan Rumpf, a small brunch aimed at fellow queer attendees. The event quickly established itself as a regular occurrence, and in 2001 Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival became sponsors to the event.[8] The sponsors described it in 2005 as "the premiere gay and lesbian industry event during Sundance".[9] By June 2006 Olson was director of consumer marketing for Wolfe Video/Wolfe Releasing.[2]

[edit] Works

Olson initially compiled trailers into documentary features, showing Homo Promo, her compilation of vintage gay movie trailers at the Amsterdam Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in 1991,[10] and her work in this area has been recognised as instructional in teaching students contextualisation.[11] She continued compiling trailers throughout the 1990s, with her last such compilation released to date being Bride of Trailer Camp, released in 2001.[1] During this period Olson also wrote Ultimate Guide to Lesbian & Gay Film and Video, published by Serpents Tail in 1996. The book was based on Olson's BA thesis,[12] and Library Journal noted the book's coverage of its subject matter as "invaluable to the student of contemporary film or gay studies".[13] Her next book was The Queer Movie Poster Book, published in 2004. This book was suggested in 1991 by Stuart Marshall, who recommended Olson pitch the idea to London's Gay Men's Press. Although the book was turned down by both them and Serpent's Tail, to whom the idea was pitched as a follow up to her previous book, Olson was eventually commissioned to write the book, described in the San Francisco Chronicle as "historically valuable",[4] in 2002. Olson based the work in part on her own collection of such material, material she has subsequently donated to San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society.[10] Her collection was exhibited at the San Francisco Public Library in 2004, with Olson delivering an accompanying lecture.[4]

In 2005 Olson released The Joy of Life, her debut feature. The film is split into two halves, the first featuring stills of San Francisco locations, accompanied by a voice over telling the story of what Olson describes as "a butch Midwestern dyke who comes to the city."[4] The second half explores the history of the Golden Gate Bridge, especially focussing on its role as a jumping point for people committing suicide. The film was awarded Best Outstanding Artistic Achievement at the 2005 Outfest and at the 2005 Newfest received Best U.S. Narrative Screenplay,[14] and has been favourably reviewed in a number of publications, with The Village Voice describing it as both "thrillingly minimalist" and "gently hypnotic".[15] It also garnered Olson the Marlon Riggs Award by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle in 2005,[16] with one member of the circle describing it as "an extraordinary lyrical meditation on love and death in the Bay Area."[17] Working on the film led Olson to pen an open letter to the San Francisco Chronicle on the matter of the Golden Gate Bridge's position as the top suicide landmark in the world. Olson's former colleague, Mark Finch had jumped from the bridge on the 14th January, 1995, and Olson used this event to inform her own film. Her letter was published on the tenth anniversary of Finch's death, and supported the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California's launching of a campaign for a barrier to be installed on the bridge.[18] Olson also distributed her film amongst the bridge's board of directors, noting "several of the bridge directors told me they appreciated seeing the film and found it illuminating",[5] and in March of 2005 the board voted to explore the installation of a barrier to prevent jumping.[3]

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ a b c Jenni Olson (html). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  2. ^ a b Ryan Diduck (June 30, 2006). Inside the Homo Studio: with Jenni Olson (html). Queer Perspectives. Offscreen.com. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  3. ^ a b Blum, Andrew. "Suicide Watch", The New York Times, March 20, 2005.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Ford, Dave. "S.F. film historian's latest book uses movie posters to shed light on changing mainstream views of lesbians and gay men", San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, October 15, 2004, pp. F1.
  5. ^ a b Matt Baume (July 8, 2005). Interview: Jenni Olson (html). SFist. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  6. ^ Contributor Biography: Jenni Olson. www.glbtq.com. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  7. ^ Cast and Crew. The Joy of Life official website. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  8. ^ Jenny Stewart (January 20, 2005). Where the indie-film A-gays play (html). Planetout.com. Retrieved on December 19, 2006. “The Queer Brunch was started in 1997 by PlanetOut's PopcornQ founder Jenni Olson and Morgan Rumpf, the former executive director of Outfest. The two wanted to create a place for their gay film colleagues to come together and network during the festival ... the low-key get-together turned into a full-scale event, with corporate sponsors such as Showtime, Sundance Channel, Fine Line Features, Absolut, here! TV and Scion getting in on the action, and Outfest co-hosting the brunch since 2001.”
  9. ^ here! Networks & Outfest: The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (December 8, 2005). here! Networks to Present 10th Annual Outfest Queer Brunch at Sundance Film Festival. Press release. Retrieved on 2006-12-19.
  10. ^ a b Morris, Gary (August 2004). "'I Changed My Socially Constructed Sexual Identity!'" (html). Bright Lights Film Journal (45). ISSN: 0147-4049. Retrieved on 2006-12-19. 
  11. ^ "Spilling out onto Castro Street" Marc Siegel Jump Cut, no. 41, May 1997, pp. 131-136 "Queer film festivals have often provided explicit contextualization for those films which are not immediately read as queer. In addition to Searle's example, there are the many film/video clip presentations that are among the most popular of festival events: Vito Russo's 1980 The Celluloid Closet presentation, and, more recently, Henry Jenkins on Queers and "Star Trek," B. Ruby Rich on "Kids in the Hall," and Judith Halberstam and Jenni Olson's "A Rough Guide to Butches in Film.""
  12. ^ Drama and Film (html). Gay & Lesbian Research Guide. Yale University Library (08/05/06). Retrieved on December 19, 2006. “originated as her B.A. thesis at the University of Minnesota. It was born in 1989 as a comprehensive lesbian filmography under the auspices of Jacquelin Zita and the University of Minnesota Women's Studies Department, with the assistance of a grant from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity grant program.”
  13. ^ Bryant, Eric (3/15/95). "Reviews". Library Journal 120 (5). 
  14. ^ Press Materials, Reviews, Upcoming Screenings. Official website. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  15. ^ Nelson, Rob. "Lessons of Darkness", Village Voice, February 1st, 2005.
  16. ^ Awards for Jenni Olson. Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
  17. ^ "'Brokeback' is top film pick of S.F. critics" Ruthe Stein. Tuesday, December 13, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle, p.E1.
  18. ^ Jenni, Olson. "Power Over Life and Death: Another toll goes up on the Golden Gate Bridge", San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, January 14, 2005, pp. B9.

[edit] External links

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