Jenni Olson is a renowned filmmaker, whose 16mm essay films have garnered widespread recognition and acclaim for their distinctive, contemplative storytelling approach. Her debut feature, The Joy of Life, made its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and played a significant role in reigniting the debate about the necessity of a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Olson's second film, The Royal Road, premiered at Sundance in 2015 and won the jury award for Best LGBTQ Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. As a co-founder of the pioneering LGBT online platform, PlanetOut.com, Olson established the massive queer movie database, PopcornQ, and launched the first showcase for LGBT streaming media, the PlanetOut Online Cinema.
Subsequently, Olson served as Vice President of e-commerce and marketing at Wolfe Video, where she created the first global LGBT streaming movie platform, WolfeOnDemand.com. Olson is one of the world's leading experts on LGBT cinema history, and her ambitious coffee table tome, The Queer Movie Poster Book (Chronicle Books),was a 2005 Lambda Literary Award nominee.
Olson is an advisory board member of the Outfest/UCLA Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation and Canyon Cinema, and a board member of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. She is also co-founder of the legendary Queer Brunch at Sundance and proud proprietor of Butch.org. Materials from her personal LGBT film archive have been featured in documentaries such as Stonewall Uprising and I Am Divine.
Her vintage 35mm movie trailer programs, including Homo Promo, Afro Promo, Trailer Camp, and others, have traveled the world. Olson continues to cover LGBT film-related news for Logo TV's NewNowNext and various other websites. As an independent consultant, she serves as an advisor to numerous filmmakers and champions queer independent cinema on a daily basis.
