Unbound

Jen Schneider is an East Coast-based cinematographer whose narrative and documentary work has been screened at Cannes, Sundance, Doxa, and other international film festivals.

Jen is honored with the International Cinematographers Guild’s Emerging Cinematographer Award for her work on Unbound, written and directed by Maggie Mahrt at AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women. The film was shot entirely in studio using an Arri Alexa EV with Cooke S4s, and a Sony F55 with Sony Primes for the vfx material.

Jen joined ICG Local 600 in 2012 as a camera assistant, and was mentored by cinematographers Martin Ahlgren, Chris Blauvelt, Adrian Correia and Danny Vecchione.

Jen’s debut as cinematographer was on the documentary Anderson Monarchs, which was singled out by Variety for “bestow[ing] a gritty grandeur on South Philly.”

Her first narrative project was The Source, an interactive web series created by Marc D’Agostino. The Source won “Best Drama” at ITVF Festival, “Best Drama” at NYTV Festival and “Best Drama” and “Best In Fest” at the Los Angeles TV Festival.

Her second feature documentary, Shored Up, directed by Ben Kalina, won the Sundance Hilton Lightstay Sustainability Award in 2014.  Jen’s work was again praised by Variety for the “…handsome camerawork” and Village Voice for ”its depiction of the perils of short-term solutions to sea-level rise, …beautifully illustrated by the film’s cinematography.”

Jen earned her bachelor’s degree from the photography program at Bard College, working under photographers Stephen Shore, Larry Fink and Barbara Ess. After college, she worked as a large format photo printer in New York, while studio assisting for photographer David Levinthal. She served as an arts educator for several years, teaching media literacy and media production in NYC public schools, before relocating to Philadelphia to earn her M.F.A. from Temple University’s Film & Media Arts program.

Recent DP credits include: Pinky, written and directed by Roja Gashtili and Julia Lerman; Ordinal (SW/NE), a 2017 experimental documentary film directed and produced by Rini Yun Keagy in collaboration with visual artist Miljohn Ruperto, which premiered at RedCat Gallery (Los Angeles); and Now Return Us To Normal, a feature documentary in-progress directed by Leslie Koren about secretive therapeutic boarding schools for problem teens.

Jen is a member of the film collectives Cinematographers XX and International Collective of Female Cinematographers (ICFC).