Jes Therkelsen is a documentary storyteller, filmmaker, photographer, and educator who has been telling the stories of others for over fifteen years. His most recent project, a short documentary film entitled One Step At A Time, follows three men as they overcome drug addiction and homelessness in California’s Central Valley. The film was an official selection of The Big Tell, a national film contest and film festival, featuring undiscovered stories from California’s Central Valley sponsored by the Central Valley Community Foundation and Bank of America.
In 2016, Therkelsen completed Social Tactics, a short documentary film that follows installation artist Joseph Delappe as he utilizes community volunteers to build a replicate predator drone made of corrugated cardboard and duct tape. The film won the Best of Festival in the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts.
Therkelsen has produced or directed four documentaries (Fresno To Fiji, Chinatown, Social Tactics, and Greener & Gold) that have broadcasted on regional PBS. Additionally, Jerry Brown’s Bucking Bulls screened at SlamDance Festival and Big Sky Film Festival, and is distributed through FusionTV. The Best Part of Everything premiered at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and is distributed through Snagfilms.
As a documentary photographer, Therkelsen has worked for over a decade with National Geographic Student Expeditions photographing and teaching across six continents. He has published two photobooks, White Nights and 100 Strangers, as well as exhibited work in Studio 54 in London, Gallerie Art et Miss in Paris, the Topolyansky Gallery in St. Petersburg, as well as galleries in Washington, D.C., New York, Tokyo, and California.
As a documentary scholar, Therkelsen has researched the linguistic effects of teaching documentary storytelling in short term study abroad programs and has published his results in the Journal of Film and Video. He has given presentations and professional talks to audiences around the world. He recently delivered a TEDx Talk entitled, “Our Relationship to Story.”
Therkelsen is a professor