Passport
Jeff Spitz | Director
Jeff Spitz is an Emmy Award winner who creates original documentaries for broadcast on PBS and cable. His credits as a writer/producer/director include: The Return of Navajo Boy, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and PBS which has won awards at film festivals internationally and received special recognition from the US EPA and the US Dept of Energy for raising awareness about the issue of uranium contamination in the Navajo Nation; From the Bottom Up, a one-hour, national PBS public affairs report about community activism; The Roosevelt Experiment, a half-hour documentary for ABC-TV telling the story of an integrated college in a segregated city; and America’s Libraries Change Lives, celebrating the immigrant experience in America’s public libraries, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. Jeff’s new documentary, Food Patriots, is a 75 minute personal film about raising chickens and trying to change the way Americans eat, buy food and educate the next generation of consumers. A California native and graduate of UCLA, Jeff holds a masters degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago. He is an Associate Professor of documentary film at Columbia College Chicago. Along with his wife Jennifer, he is the co-founder of Groundswell Educational Films, a non-profit organization that creates documentary films and ongoing public engagement campaigns.
Jennifer Amdur-Spitz | Co-Producer
Jennifer Amdur-Spitz, Co-Producer of Food Patriots, is principal of Amdur Spitz & Associates, Inc.,a strategic marketing/communications company which she founded in 1992. Jennifer leads all program development and marketing communications projects for this national agency and works with clients on strategic direction and planning. She attends to each project personally and assembles custom-tailored project teams of seasoned professionals to accomplish specific client goals.
Jennifer has utilized her keen marketing, non-profit management and entrepreneurial skills to design and develop new non-profit organizations or programs within existing ones and to develop award-winning integrated marketing communications campaigns for clients. She coined the term, Food Patriots and leads the national engagement campaign. Her work in media includes creation of videos, websites and multimedia campaigns as well as curriculum for schools. Her experience as a multimedia project team leader is considerable. Along with her husband, filmmaker, Jeff Spitz, she is the Co-founder of Groundswell Educational Films, a not-for-profit producer of documentaries and community engagement campaigns.
For Groundswell she served as the Co-Executive producer of The Robben Island Singers Film and Concert Project, a highly acclaimed American musical tour by three former political prisoners who were incarcerated with Nelson Mandela at South Africa’s notorious apartheid prison, Robben Island. Jennifer also developed the media relations campaign for the internationally acclaimed documentary film, The Return of Navajo Boy, a Sundance Film Festival and PBS selection. This powerful documentary is credited with helping the Navajo Nation secure the first ever clean up of an abandoned uranium mine on Native American land.
Prior to starting her own agency, Jennifer worked nine years in government, corporate and nonprofit communications. She held the following positions: Chief, Office of Communications for the Illinois Department of Public Aid, 1988 – 1992; Account Executive in consumer marketing at Burson-Marsteller, Chicago; and Director of Communications and Development at the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. She began her career in public relations, working with several nonprofit arts organizations.
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