Jennifer Maytorena Taylor Director, For the Love of Rutland

Producer/Director/Cinematographer Jennifer Maytorena Taylor makes colorful, character-based films about real people with extraordinary stories, often with Spanish-language content. Her work has shown at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, New York Museum of Modern Art, PBS, Sundance Channel, Al Jazeera, and NHK-Japan. Jennifer’s latest short film, Redneck Muslim, co-directed with Mustafa Davis, airs on national PBS in POV Shorts Season 3 in Fall/Winter 2020. Other recent work includes Message to Zaire/The Talk (also co-directed with Mustafa Davis) for national PBS; Daisy and Max, a long-form documentary commissioned by Al Jazeera America; and the short Visiting Day for The Atlantic. Previous credits include the award-winning documentaries New Muslim Cool for POV and PBS, Special Circumstances for national PBS, Paulina (world premiere at Sundance Film Festival), the Emmy Award-winning Home Front, and many short films and co-productions. Jennifer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she also directs the Social Documentation MFA program. Born in Southern California of Mexican, Sicilian and Irish/English heritage, she grew up in Los Angeles and Vermont and has lived in San Francisco for over three decades. She has held fellowships at institutions such as the Banff Centre for the Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Journalism, and the MacDowell Colony and is a fellow of the Sundance Documentary Institute.,