AWARD WINNING CANADIAN TALENT
Jonathan Joffe is one of Alberta’s leading directors. He has a feature, 2 TV shows, multiple award winning short films, and over a dozen screenplays to his name. His films have won over 20 awards, and have screened theatrically over 100 times from Finland to Japan. Jonathan is also available to work with local business for corporate and promotional video, and is always willing to work with local non-profit and charitable organizations.
Jonathan Joffe began his career as a volunteer in a community television station in 1994. Since then he has continually developed his creative technical, and producing skills.
His first major film project, entitled Young Rocket Samurai, was released in 2002. It is an epic children’s tale packed with action, special FX, and animation and earned a national broadcast license on Canada’s Space Channel. Since then he has gone on to produce a slate of short films which have won over 15 awards on the independent festival circuit, including the international sensation Cost Of Living, (Starring William B. Davis of The X-Files) which screened at over 45 festivals worldwide, and the award winning thriller The Boiler Room, which was released in 2008.
After Young Rocket Samurai Jonathan Joffe co-founded an ongoing workshop for actors and directors known as Upstart, in conjunction with ACTRA and AMPIA(the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association). Each week directors and actors perform scene studies for the camera from either existing works or original un-produced screenplays. Over the years Jonathan has completed over 200 scenes, with over 100 actors.
January 2007 saw the release of his first TV series Have Guide Will Travel, a 3 part half hour travel documentary about backpacking in Mexico. The show, on which Joffe worked as producer, director, host, and editor, aired nationally on Canadian Learning Television, and is now being distributed by US distributor John McLean Media.
Since then Jonathan Joffe has been prolific having directed a sitcom pilot for an international co-production based out of New York (winner of the 2009 NY Access Pilot competition and nominated for the 2010 Banff TV Festival’s International Pilots competition), and written 12 feature length screen plays. His recent work has earned 7 additional awards, and two of his feature screenplays have placed in the Alberta Screenwriter’s initiative screenplay competition. Those two scripts have been optioned (one by Alliance and one by eOne) with one receiving development financing from Telefilm.
Joffe’ recently completed his first feature length project The Burlesque Assassins (produced in association with Telefilm Canada and Superchannel).
Set in the 1950’s, this film follows the adventures of a group of burlesque performers turned super spies as they battle a cold war plot to take over the world. The Burlesque Assassins recently won Best Cinematography from The Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association. The film has been a critical success and an audience favorite. CTV film reviewer Richard Crouse called The Burlesque Assassins “wildly entertaining”, and Ben Walters of Time Out London described the film as “rollicking action and romance”. The film began touring theatrically in July 2012 and screened theatrically in over 60 times worldwide, and been translated into 7 languages.
Outside of the film industry, Jonathan is a 2nd degree black belt in Wado Kai Karate, a scuba diver / underwater videographer, an avid swing dancer, and skier, and has backpacked through 15 countries on 4 continents.