JASON
WHITON
Selected Awards/Screenings: Sundance (short-listed), Nicholl Fellowships (Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences), PBS, American Zoetrope, Independent Film Quarterly, Slamdance, Osaka, Woodstock, Boston, Sapporo, Sarasota, Palm Springs, Cinequest, Bennington Museum, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market. Links: IMDB, TMDB.
Upcoming: Backer for the documentary, George Lucas: the Lost Golden Age, about the Young Indiana Jones TV series.
Film Education: Congrats to my students who have screened at Cannes, ILM Theater at Lucasfilm, SFMoMA, and worked for HBO and Jerry Bruckheimer Television. I've been a guest film teacher at Bennington and UC Berkeley and currently teach film and art in San Francisco.
Looking for new opportunities as a film programmer! Selected experience: EFS convener and TOFS founder (Earlham Collage), Pothole Pictures (programmer), Brattleboro Film Series (founder), Brattflix (programmer), cultural series Shizukuishi Japan (founder).
The Bonsai
Update: 2026: a new version of my story is out with competitions and recently placed in the Flicker's Rhode Island International Film Festival, Big Apple, Scriptation, Beverly Hills, and scored highly with The Black List.
Earlier version: "This script is the most beautifully written script I've read in a long time. The writing itself is phenomenal, the story is fantastic, and the plot points are not only well placed, the characters in each small story are rich with the kind of depth and detail that other authors can only establish over an entire manuscript." -Cinequest Film Festival
I Was a Dancer
In this experimental short film, form and movement become haunting testimony for an elderly Japanese woman who can no longer dance in a local festival.
Selected awards, official selections, and markets: Sundance (short-listed), Sapporo, Kansai, Crested Butte, Big Muddy, Boston, Cinequest, PBS, Bennington Museum, Sarasota, Woodstock, Palm Springs, Clermont-Ferrand, American Dance Festival.
"Beautiful!" -Roberta Munroe (Sundance Film Festival)
"Sensual!" -Bennington Museum
"This may have been my favorite short film of the show. A very lush piece with lovely music that looks at the exotic attractiveness of dancers contrasted with the invisibility of older women." -Harvard Library Innovation Lab
Formerly distributed by Oaut! Media/Canada
Trivia: The film was inspired by lo-fi, cinema verite, and experimental work by Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, and others. Footage of a northern Japanese festival is woven with scenes of elderly women to create a loose narrative about aging and memory. Jason lived for many years in northern Japan, where the film takes place, and created both the film and the Japanese music-inspired soundtrack.
Soundtrack here
The Sun is Down
The experimental film for Jason Whiton's winning remix for Yoko Ono celebrates the meaning of her name, "ocean child", with images of sea creatures.
The Jazz/Lounge soundtrack was composed by Jason Whiton around vocal stems by Yoko Ono and was a winner of the 2009 The Sun is Down Remix Competition held by the Plastic Ono Band. View Here.
Awards:
-Director's Choice Silver Medal for Excellence- Park City Film Music Festival (2010)
-Best Mobile Film- New Media Film Festival (2011)
Selected Screenings:
-Park City, New Media, Microsoft, BWAC Gallery, Showbiz Cafe
Selected Films
Lennon70 (2010) experimental sound/film collage tribute to John Lennon
The Apples Project/Roads (2005) supervisor for director Jack Criddle (Museum Town)
Silver Beats Revolution (2005) trailer for Beatles tribute band in Tokyo
Out There (1990) experimental short film
Reflections From Another (1989) short animated film
Jason backed films: George Lucas: the Lost Golden Age (Lucas/Indiana Jones doc), Good Ol' Freda (Beatles doc), George (Fluxus doc), Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines (doc), Lyle (Stewart Thorndike drama)
Education
Jason often helps develop story structure, scripts, storyboarding, sound, and editing for student projects. Some notable works: Out of the Blue and Cheese by Vivian Nguyen, Poisoned Apple by Angelica Reyfer, His Last Day by Dean Moro, Apples and The Knitting Machine by Jack Criddle.