Artist Talk with Filmmaker Terry Jones
in conversation with Beth Piatote
Wednesday, October 5th 2022
2:00 – 3:00pm PST
ONLINE
Presented by the Arts Research Center
Terry Jones is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians, who are located in western New York State. Terry has a passion for sharing his Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history and culture through his film works, and founded the upstart Independent Indigenous media production company TornJersey Media. He strives to find a balance between entertaining and educating his audiences. Terry is currently pursuing his MFA in film at York University in Toronto, Ontario.
Terry’s short films, many co-directed with Indian filmmaker Govind Deecee, have found success on the film festival circuit worldwide. Standouts include “Soup For My Brother” which was named Best Documentary at the 2016 Liverpool International Film Festival in the United Kingdom as well as “Give and Take” (co-directed with Deecee) winning Emerging Filmmaker at the 2015 LA Skins Fest in Los Angeles. “Scarlett,” a short experimental film (co-directed with Govind Deecee and Akshay Raheja), was produced while studying 35mm film production at the FAMU film school in the Czech Republic, was awarded a Special Mention at the 2016 Arte Non Stop Film Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Jones’ short films have found distribution at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) in Toronto; which includes “Soup For My Brother,” “Savage / Future,” “Empire State,” “[untitled & unlabeled],” “Ode to the Nine” and “Gik:skwod.”
Jones’ short films continue to screen at film festivals including the Las Cruces International Film Festival in New Mexico (2022), Buffalo International Film Festival (2022), Forest City Film Festival in London, Ontario (2021), Tampere Film Festival in Finland (2021), Wairoa Maori Film Festival in New Zealand (2021), Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York, UK (2020) as well Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival in Ottawa, ON (2020).
Most recently, Terry is the curator and host of the Haudenosaunee Micro-Short Film Program, which will screen at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York in September 2022. The program will feature 14 micro-short films by Haudenosaunee filmmakers. The film program will also screen at the Seneca Niagara Casino as part of their Native Heritage Month programming in November 2022.
During the summer of 2021, Terry was part of a gaming team that was awarded BEST CONCEPT at imagineNATIVE’s Land Jam+. Land Jam+ was a game jam made for and by Indigenous creatives: a multi-day event where participants from different disciplines work in collaborative teams to create video games and interactive media from scratch. In 2020, Terry completed the Open Immersion II – Creative Doc VR Lab which was produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and in partnership with the Canadian Film Centre and imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, supported by the Ford Foundation.
Terry currently serves as Secretary on the Board of Trustees at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum on the Seneca Territory. Previously, Terry served as Vice Chairman/Secretary at American Indian Community House in New York City, as well a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts and he also served as an official selector at the 2011 Native American Film + Video Festival – National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institute) in New York City.
