Jen Gilomen is Lead Developer of Strategic Initiatives at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), working in collaboration with national broadcasting entities and community-based organizations to develop innovative initiatives for public media production, distribution, and education.  In this role, she is responsible for BAVC’s digital storytelling programs, social enterprise activities, and strategic partnerships, including the development of a next generation Internet coalition and a national “crowd-sourced” public media and preservation model. For two years, Jen managed BAVC’s Digital Storytelling Institute as producer and advisor, helping over twenty California-based nonprofits to increase their technical capacity and harness media for social change. Before joining BAVC as webmaster in 2000, Jen worked in strategic communications for technology companies at p.s.l. market research, and as a Usability Specialist and Information Designer for NBC Internet. She has acted as an advisor for nearly one hundred independent producers and nonprofit organizations, managed youth and adult media programs, developed interactive web sites for companies, nonprofits, and independent filmmakers, and produced nationally and internationally distributed films.

Jen’s current documentary, MINE (Co-Director and Cinematographer; one-hour HD for broadcast), is a story about life-long friends and neighbors who find themselves at the complex epicenter of the nation’s energy debate as a coal company begins to mine their small Eastern Kentucky town. The film received ITVS LINCS funding in partnership with Kentucky Educational Television (KET), was selected for the 2008 IFP Marketplace Spotlight on Documentaries, and received grants from Chicken & Egg, Pacific Pioneer, Banff Centre, and Film Arts Foundation.  Jen has been working on the ground with national and regional partners, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Al Gore’s The Climate Project and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, to ensure the film’s nationwide impact upon release in 2009.  Jen’s previous projects include cinematography for the feature documentary Delta Rising (Tin Can Films, 2008), which stars Morgan Freeman and famous blues musicians, and In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents (2005; 31:40 documentary), which won the Audience Award for Best Short at the Frameline Film Festival before screening in festivals and community centers in nearly every U.S. state and in over ten countries.  It is distributed by Frameline and aired nationally on LinkTV in 2008.  Jen’s narrative shorts “Godspeed” (Co-Director, 2007), “Piece de Resistance” (Director, 2002), and “Sigmund Freud: Professional Psychoanalyst” (co-director) have screened in various festivals in the U.S., France, Italy, England, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand.