Kristi Jacobson is an award-winning director and producer of non-fiction films and television. Jacobson’s 2007 film, TOOTS, a portrait of larger-than-life New York saloonkeeper and personality Toots Shor, garnered several nominations and awards, including the National Board of Review’s Top Documentary Award following its critically acclaimed theatrical release in 2007. Called “one of the most compelling, yet forgotten stories of the 20th Century” by journalist Walter Cronkite, TOOTS was selected as a critics’ pick by The New York Times, The New York Post and New York Magazine and features interviews with some of America’s most accomplished journalists, athletes and sports writers (among them Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Frank Gifford, Whitey Ford, Pete Hamill, Nick Pileggi, Gay Talese). The NY Times called it “a first-rate portrait…a rare exception. Cheers to Ms. Jacobson for keeping alive the memory of New York’s golden era, and a man who embodied it.”
Kenneth Turan of the LA Times called Kristi’s debut feature, American Standoff, “deeply human…surprisingly heartbreaking…” The film, examining the role of unions in modern times and the legacy of Jimmy Hoffa, premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO’s award-winning “America Undercover” series later that year.
Jacobson’s most recent film, Finding North, produced by Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, FOOD, Inc.) premieres at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Finding North examines the shocking paradox of hunger in the wealthiest nation on earth, through the stories of three Americans who face food insecurity daily. The film features original music by indie-folk duo The Civil Wars and Grammy- and Oscar-winning producer/composer T Bone Burnett.
Prior to founding Catalyst Films in 2004, Jacobson collaborated with two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple on several films, including American Standoff, which Kopple produced. Other films produced and/or directed with Kopple include the Voices of Courage Award-winning documentary, Defending Our Daughters, an investigation into women’s human rights abuses in Bosnia, Pakistan and Egypt, broadcast on Lifetime Television; And Justice for All?, a short documentary exploring the issue of immigration law made for the Alliance for Justice.
For television Jacobson has tackled a wide range of subjects and her work has been broadcast on a variety of networks, including HBO, PBS, ESPN, ABC, A&E, CBS, Lifetime, Sundance Channel and Channel Four (UK). Among her television credits are: Colonial House (2004, PBS), which received an Emmy nomination and was winner of 6 Cine Golden Eagle Awards; Together: Stop Violence Against Women, a one-hour documentary produced by Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus of Moxie Firecracker Films for Lifetime Telvision; Tanya Tucker: Country Rebel for A&E Biography; Sex, Drugs and Consequences hosted by Barbara Walters for ABC Television; Outriders for PBS; E:60 for ESPN.
Jacobson also directs commercials and promotional films for a variety of clients including The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and DeSantis Breindel.
Jacobson graduated Summa Cum Laude from Duke University, where she studied sociology, and is an adjunct professor of documentary film at NYU’s SCPS.
