Jes Therkelsen
Adjunct Instructor
School of Communication
Degrees
BA, Geology, Amherst College. MFA, Film and Media Arts, American University
Bio
Jes Therkelsen approaches media making as a means to explore and pay closer attention to the world around him. The powerful immediacy and influence of visual media, its artistic potential, and the capacity to elicit emotion often drive his projects. His work has screened worldwide and has confronted issues such as human rights, sustainable development and environmental justice.
Therkelsen is a 2009 Washington D.C. Artist Fellow. He was awarded an Advocacy Peace Fellowship in Nepal for the summer of 2008. He has also won the Roland Wood Fellowship three times, the Institute for Humane Studies Film and Fiction Scholarship twice, was a 2007 Flaherty Film Fellow and a 2006 National Gallery of Art Film Fellow. He has won a D.C. Peer Award and a CINE Golden Eagle.
Therkelsen is the founder of Sensory Media Arts, a Washington D.C. - based media production company. Before filmmaking, Therkelsen worked as a geologist with USGS, NASA and the New Jersey DEP. Born and raised in suburbia, New Jersey, he has lived in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Greece, Germany and Nepal. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. with a bamboo stalk and a cactus and can be seen riding his bicycle a lot.
