In his award winning short documentary, Jennifer, filmmaker Stewart Copeland explores his relationship with his mother through a recorded conversation between eighth-grade students and astronauts aboard the international space station. Utilizing home movies, found footage, ambient music and voice over, combined with Copeland's own imagery, the film explores the distant spaces between memory and history; hope and fear; longing and loss, creating something both personal and universal.

Jennifer was broadcast nationally on PBS as part of POV's Emmy Award winning 2009 season.

“Winner of Best Mini Doc at the 2009 Big Sky Documentary Festival and showing tomorrow evening as part of PBS's acclaimed POV Series, Jennifer explores director Stewart Copeland's relationship with his mother in both actuality and memory. Using a conversation between his mother's eighth-grade students and astronauts on the international space station, Copeland uses space as a purveyor of indescribable distance – both between the students and the astronauts, the living world and whatever else is out there, and Copeland and his mother. Wonderfully including segments of stop-motion animation of astronauts in space, Copeland shows that, while some things cannot be seen, anyone who is looking closely can still hear, feel, and love some thing, or someone, who may not be physically present. Managing a dialectic between the audio and visual components, Jennifer plays with not only Copeland's relationship to this personal film, but illustrates and challenges the spectator's relationship with Copeland, the rest of the audience, and the film experience itself. Beautifully rendered, quietly elegant, and subtly complex, Jennifer is a wonderful film and announces Copeland as a major talent to watch.”

-James Hansen, Out 1 Film Journal

Past Screenings

+ The Big Sky International Documentary Film Festival / FEB 13-22 2009 USA

+ The Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival / MAR 6-8 2009 USA

+ Nashville Film Festival / APR 21 & 23 2009 USA

+ The Atlanta Film Festival / APR 22 & 24 2009 USA

+ Indie Memphis / OCT 12 2009 USA

+ San Francisco Documentary Festival / OCT 16-29 2009 USA

+ St. Louis International Film Festival / NOV 12-22 2009 USA

+ CINECITY The Brighton Film Festival / NOV 19th-Dec 6th 2009 UK

Awards

+ Best Mini-Doc / Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2009

+ Tennessee Independent Spirit Award / Nashville Film Festival 2009

+ Special Jury Award for Documentary Short / Indie Memphis 2009

Broadcast Premiere

+ POV on PBS / September 22nd, 2009