Rohrer Film & Video was established by Jenny Rohrer in 1991 following 18 years as a partner in Chicago's MacArthur Genius grant award-winning studio, Kartemquin Films. Jenny's early career highlights are producing and directing the breakthrough Chicago Maternity Center Story, named IDA's best documentary of 1976, Women's Voices: The Gender Gap Movie, most recently screened in 2012 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and other long and short form documentaries for TV and educational distribution. Rohrer Film & Video created videos for non-profits, unions and advocacy groups in Washington, D.C. for 15 years, and is now located in Montana, servicing clients nationally.
"Rohrer Film & Video's work for MMBB Financial Services inspires and educates our members through visual craftsmanship and effective storytelling. Rohrer's keen ear for our financial and religious message translates into videos that work -- on our website, at conventions or in small group meetings. They deliver professional results to non-profit organizations on-time and on-budget." - Harold Leibovitz, Director of Communications, MMBB Financial Services, NYC
Visual craftsmanship. Effective storytelling. These qualities endure even as formats and distribution mechanisms change. Web videos? Recruitment shows? Rohrer's expertise lies in creating films that motivate and produce results. First Vote, a 16-minute RF&V production, helped register over 400,000 new young voters in the nation's high schools as a part of a unique curriculum program for People for the American Way. Rohrer has produced media campaigns on child safety, campaign finance and was the producer of Community Works TV, a PBS pilot funded by the Independent Television Service and the MacArthur Foundation about how change happens in America. Rohrer productions have been featured as a corporate outreach vehicle with the Americans with Disabilities Act, as member education and recruitment for the Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Fund (MMBB), motivational videos for the American Baptist Churches USA and convention videos for the Service Employees International Union and MMBB.
Rohrer at the Lincoln Center for
Women's Voices: The Gender Gap Movie Event
Photos by Suzanne Chollet Design
Kartemquin Films' Womens Voices: The Gender Gap
Rohrer interviews Pastor William Lawson, Houston
In her decades of documentary experience, Rohrer has produced award-winning, nationally broadcast documentaries including Science Held Hostage, executive-produced Golub, a 60-minute film featured on PBS's POV series and in the New York Film Festival. Cybil Shepherd served as the on-camera host of Science Held Hostage, and said
“Rohrer's script was one of the best I've ever worked with. I didn't change a word!”
Jenny Rohrer, Producer/Director
Jenny was a partner in Chicago's Kartemquin Films from 1971 to 1988, and the founding president of Kartemquin Educational Films, KTQ’s non-profit arm in 1973. She founded Rohrer Film & Video in 1991, and relocated that company to Seeley Lake, Montana in 2003. She continues to collaborate with Kartemquin as a producer.
Jenny travels nationally
for production and finds talented Missoula collaborators for post-production
editing and completion of her projects. Most frequently, Rohrer works with
Missoula-based Gita Saedi Kiely of West of Kin
Productions and Damon and Eric Ristau of Firewater Film Company. She is currently a programmer for the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana and the coordinator of Alpine Artisans' Crown of the Continent Community Cinema in Seeley Lake and Condon, Montana.
In her 37 years of documentary production, Rohrer has produced award-winning, nationally-broadcast documentaries, including Science Held Hostage, a documentary production for the Turner Broadcast System and executive-produced Golub, a 60-minute film featured on PBS's POV series and in the New York Film Festival. Cybil Shepherd served as the on-camera host for Science Held Hostage and said, "Rohrer's script was one of the best I've ever worked with - I didn't change a word!"
Rohrer has produced media campaigns on child safety, campaign finance and was the producer of Community Works TV, a PBS pilot funded by ITVS and the MacArthur Foundation. Rohrer productions have been featured as a point-of-sales presentation for Rockwell International, as a corporate-outreach vehicle on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and as a focus of a corporate presentation by the Association of Foam Packing Recyclers. Rohrer's three decades of film making experience is rooted in a solid tradition of results-oriented media production.
The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) has twice awarded a Rohrer production its top award for the best video produced by an association;
The cast of the hit NBC series ER was featured in a series of Public Service Announcements Rohrer created on the issue of child safety. These spots ran during NBC daytime and prime time.
First Vote, a 16-minute RF&V production, helped register over 400,000 new young voters in the nation's high schools as a part of a unique curriculum program sponsored by People for the American Way and funded by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. First Vote won a Gold Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival for outstanding Public Service and Information.
Rohrer has produced several television specials that were broadcast on Turner Broadcasting and PBS.
Gita Saedi Kiely, Editor and Co-Producer
Gita Saedi Kiely is an award-winning documentary film producer, director and editor with 20 years of professional experience. Kiely frequently co-produces and edits for Rohrer Film & Video and is also an adjunct professor film at the University of Montana.
In 2004, Kiely was the series producer and story editor for Kartemquin Films' nationally acclaimed PBS series The New Americans, a three-part, seven hour series following five immigrant families' journey to and first year in the US. Prior to The New Americans, Kiely served on production teams for Channel 4-UK, CBS Entertainment, Viacom, PBS in the US and RTE in Ireland.
The New Americans, Saedi Kiely¹s credits include line producing Reel Paradise, a feature documentary about indy film guru John Pierson and his family's adventure on a remote island in Fiji; and producing, directing and editing Montana Mosaic, an NEH-funded, 12-part educational DVD series on Montana History for Montana Public Schools. She is currently completing Jailed For Their Words: When Free Speech Died in Wartime America, a one-hour documentary on free speech and the Montana Sedition Act of 1918, based on Clem Work's book, Darkest Before Dawn.
Gita has received numerous awards for her work, which has been broadcast and presented in film festivals worldwide. Saedi Kiely lives in Missoula with her husband and two children.
Rohrer also collaborates with Damon and Eric Ristau, owners of Firewater Film Company, based in Missoula, Montana and Salt Lake City, Utah. Firewater specializes in high-end, High Definition video production and post-production. Firewater Films partners, brothers Eric and Damon Ristau, have been directing, producing and editing documentary films, commercials and other video content since 1995. Their recent award-winning commercial work has appeared on television networks such as the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, TLC, CNN, ABC and MSNBC. In 2007, Firewater was awarded a multi-year contract with the State of Utah Office of Tourism. Firewater is currently completing their first feature, The Best Bar in America, scheduled for release in the Spring of 2009.