Mandy Jacobson

Mandy Jacobson is a multiple Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker who has been working out of New York and South Africa for the past 10 years. Jacobson’s fieldwork has taken her across the globe including the USA, Brazil, Bosnia, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Cuba, Mozambique and South Africa to make heard stories not typically covered by the mass media, stories that explore the passion and politics of different forms of truth-telling and justice-seeking.

Jacobson's two Emmy awards came as producer and director of "Calling the Ghosts: A Film About Rape, War and Women in Bosnia" (1997). The film achieved widespread international broadcast, critical acclaim and secondary coverage, and was instrumental in the recognition that rape, under international law, is prosecutable as a crime against humanity. It still continues to be used by educational institutions and policy makers around the globe.

For PBS’s award winning series, WideAngle, she directed Road to Riches (2003) about South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment Policies and for WideAngle’s 2005 season is directing a documentary about the war in Darfur, Sudan.

"Facing the Truth with Bill Moyers (PBS,1999)," about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission received the 1999 DuPont-Columbia Gold Baton and a Peabody Award.

In 2004 Jacobson directed four documentaries on Nelson Mandela as part of South African’s Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship series to celebrate the former Presidents’ global contribution to human rights. She has also directed stories about young people’s efforts to stem HIV/AIDS produced by South Africa’s largest teen HIV outreach effort, LOVELIFE for SABC 1.

Ms. Jacobson holds a Masters Degree in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics. She began her career working as a producer of numerous music videos with acclaimed Academy nominated filmmaker Milcho Manchevski. (9/05)

Calling the Ghosts
Executive Producer: Julia Ormond
Directed by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic, 1996, 63 min., Color
An extraordinarily powerful documentary, CALLING THE GHOSTS is the first-person account of two women caught in a war where rape was as much an everyda...