For the past nine years Mr. Jacobsen has been the Executive Director of TheFilmSchool, which he co-founded, and is the host and director of the national PBS show, The Artist Toolbox, which has an estimated viewing audience of 30 million people. Mr. Jacobsen has 30 years of experience in directing, working in films, television and stage. He directed the feature film, Around the Fire, which won numerous awards including Italy’s Giffoni Film Festival and a Best Independent Filmmaker’s Award nomination at SIFF, and has produced several features, including the Columbia/Tri-Star picture Nervous Ticks starring Bill Pullman and Peter Boyle. His other major production credits include the HBO movie of the week, Danger of Love, John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick Up with Roy Scheider and Ann Margaret, and The Assassin with Charles Bronson. Films he directed/produced, including the recent very well-received film, Arthur (showed at SIFF 2011), and newly released Spinning (which will be showing at SIFF 2012), have played at major festivals around the world and won numerous awards including Best of Fest, Best Fiction Film at Action/Cut, Best Fantasy at MIFFF, Excellence in Film at Accolade, and gold, silver, and bronze awards at other festivals. He directed over thirty stage plays regionally and in New York, with such talents as Sandra Bullock, Marcia Gay Harden, Eli Wallach, Scott Bakula, Jill Eikenberry, Bernard Shaw, Linda Hunt, John Shea, and Yeardley Smith, worked on Broadway under the legendary director, Hal Prince, directed and produced the Tribute to Katherine Dunham on CBS’s Emmy Award-winning Kennedy Center Honors, was a casting director with the great Ronnie Yeskel, and worked under the Academy Award-winning documentary maker, Charles Guggenheim. He managed the Motion Picture and Television Department at UCLA Extension, directed commercials, has sold numerous screenplays which have won awards as films like the International Family Film Festival – Best Feature Drama, the Redemptive Storyteller Award, and Best of the Northwest, and was a Directing Fellow in the Center for Advanced Filmmaking at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles. He is a script doctor, mentors directors and writers on their feature film, theatre, and television projects, and also teaches master classes in acting (film and stage), directing (film and stage) and writing all around the country at such fine institutions as UCLA, Cornish, Seattle Central Community College, Freehold and TheFilmSchool.  Mr. Jacobsen sits on and helps support several non-profit boards including The ACT Theatre (where he served as Vice President), and The New Century Theatre Company Advisory Board, is principal partner of the film company MogaJacobsen, and is married to the fashion stylist and author Pia Jacobsen.  Mr. Jacobsen is proud of many things, but certainly he is most proud of his three sons and of winning the Big Brother of the Year Award for his work with the United Way.

 

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