Jed Riffe

Jed Riffe is an award-winning film director, producer and transmedia storyteller. Over the last thirty years Riffe produced seven nationally broadcast public television specials including a four-hour TV series, three theatrical released documentaries and four major interactive media installations. He is best known as producer and director of these award-winning films: "Ishi, the Last Yahi", the true story of the man known as the Last Wild Indian in North America; "Who Owns the Past?", the American Indian struggle for control of their ancestral remains; "California's 'Lost' Tribes" examines the impact of Indian gaming on Native Americans and their non-Indian neighbors and "Waiting to Inhale: Marijuana, Medicine and the Law", the first documentary on the movement to legalize medical cannabis and the efficacy of medicinal cannabis. Most recently, Riffe produced "The Long Shadow" on the legacy of slavery, and "A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics and the American Dream". Both films were in limited theatrical release in 2018-2019. Riffe was series producer of the "California and the American Dream" PBS series including producing "Ripe for Change" with Emiko Omori. Riffe co-produced the new documentary "One Voice", the story of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir premiering at the 2018 Mill Valley Film Festival. He executive produced: the nationally broadcast documentaries: "A New Color: The Art of Being Edythe Boone"; "Smokin' Fish", and "To Chris Marker, An Unsent Letter". He also served as a producer of the new film "Is Your Story Making You Sick"? Riffe produced the first Africana Interactive Studies Center at Merritt College; he served as interactive producer/writer for four interactive exhibits for the Autry Museum of American History; interactive producer and writer for the award-winning "Public Broadcasting In Public Places." Riffe and his team designed, programmed, built and installed four innovative, interactive media kiosks with 160 minutes of specially edited interactive content from the "California and the American Dream" series. Riffe wrote, produced and directed "TV of Tomorrow," an interactive prototype demonstrating the possible ways interactive content might appear on television in the future. Riffe produced 86 minutes of video for three interactive History Information Stations, at the Oakland Museum of California. Riffe and his media projects have won over 35 national and international film festival awards, and been the recipient of five NEH planning and production grants, in addition to a NEH Chairman's Discretionary award for "Who Owns the Past?" he has also received major funding from the Ford Foundation, the Skirball Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Sundance Documentary Film Program, Native American Public Telecommunications, Latino Public Broadcasting, Center for Asian Media, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, LEF Foundation and twenty-seven state humanities councils. He is honored to be both a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellow/Alumni and a Gerbode Fellow for Excellence in Non-Profit Management.