Kristi Jacobson

Kristi Jacobson is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker whose body of work tackles a wide range of subjects including violence against women, workers rights, HIV and AIDS, capital punishment, and homelessness. Her films have been featured on HBO, A&E, Lifetime, ABC Television, Sundance Channel and PBS.

Kristi's debut feature-length documentary, American Standoff, premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast as part of HBOs award-winning America Undercover series. Produced by two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple, the film captures the Teamsters Unions high-stakes battle to organize non-union trucking giant Overnite Transporation and looks at the role of unions in modern times as well as the legacy of Jimmy Hoffa, whose son became Teamster President in 1999.

Kristi was a director/producer for PBSs 8-part critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated series, Colonial House (2004), winner of 6 Cine Golden Eagle Awards. Some of her other work as producer/director includes several collaborations Barbara Kopple, including two films for the Alliance for Justice, one about widespread injustice in the capital punishment system and another, And Justice For All (winner, Voices of Courage Award), about Dominican immigrant Jesus Collados struggle for freedom after being imprisoned due to immigration reform. She also worked with Kopple on Defending Our Daughters, about women survivors of the war in Bosnia, broadcast on Lifetime Television. Also for Lifetime, Kristi directed Together: Stop Violence Against Women, a one-hour documentary produced by award-winning filmmakers Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus of Moxie Firecracker Films. Among her other television credits are: Tanya Tucker: Country Rebel for A&E Biography; Sex, Drugs and Consequences hosted by Barbara Walters for ABC Television; Outriders for PBS.

Most recently, Kristi completed TOOTS, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival and will be released theatrically in September 2007 by Menemsha Films.

In 2004, Kristi founded Catalyst Films, a New York-based production company dedicated to making independent films and television, driven by her passion for bringing human stories to the screen through intimate documentary storytelling.

Kristi graduated Summa Cum Laude from Duke University, where she studied sociology.