Joe Jenkins

Joe's filmmaking career began in March 2003, at a protest outside a US Air Force base in Gloucestershire as B-52 bombers prepared to bomb Iraq. Joe, using a Hi8 camera, captured the events and made a film about taxpayers who refused to pay for the war. Contempt of Conscience received its UK premiere the following year at the Notting Hill Film Festival and won first prize at the Strasbourg Film Festival in 2005. In 2008, a feature version premiered at the Milano Film Festival. Joe, a teacher and author of textbooks on philosophy & ethics, began utilizing his knowledge of the film industry and, with Nick Thomson (a fellow Herefordshire-based filmmaker), began making short cutting edge documentaries for teachers and youth workers on a series of contemporary ethical issues including the Environment, Sexual Ethics, Abortion and War & Peace. To date Joe's films have been shown in schools and colleges in Britain, Australasia, America and Hong Kong - the success of the project demonstrating the power of film to command attention and generate rational debate in the classroom and beyond.