Jacqueline Olive

Independent Filmmaker

Jacqueline Olive is an independent filmmaker with nearly twenty years of experience in journalism and film. Her award-winning debut documentary film, Always in Season, has received numerous honors including winner of the 2019 Sundance Festival Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency and nominations for Best Writing from IDA Documentary Awards (2019) and Cinema Eye Honors (2019). Always in Season broadcast on Independent Lens on PBS in 2020 and was the highest rated film of the season.

In addition to creating the 2022 Peabody Award-winning VR project, Always in Season Island–Olive directed, produced, and wrote the documentary film, Death is Our Business, which broadcast on FRONTLINE/PBS and the WORLD Channel in February 2021 and executive produced and directed Lincoln’s Dilemma, an Emmy-nominated 4-part Apple TV series (2023).

Olive taught film at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Social Documentation M.F.A. program and is currently a 2023 Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center Documentary Fellow. She remains on the Central Coast of California, happily making films and immersive media full-time.

Participating Sessions

Forging the Future: FRONTLINE/Firelight Fellowship

The FRONTLINE/Firelight Investigative Journalism Fellowship was created in 2018 to support independent filmmakers of color interested in journalistic documentary filmmaking. Representatives from each organization will show us three case studies on how these two media powerhouses are coming together to guide the next generation in leading-edge work.