Artist

Jennifer Abbott

Jennifer Abbott is a Canadian director, editor, media activist and documentary filmmaker. She is best known as one of the directors and editor of the widely acclaimed documentary, The Corporation (2003, www.thecorporation.com), which explores the corporation as the dominant institution of our time, considering its legal status as a person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world as a psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person. Sometimes billed as Canada’s most successful documentary, The Corporation was held over in theatres internationally and won 26 international awards including the 2004 Sundance Audience Choice Award for World Cinema, the 2005 Genie for best documentary, and a Top Ten Films of the Year designation from the Toronto International Film Festival. Most recently, Abbott undertook an unlikely collaboration with comedy director Tom Shadyac (Liar Liar, Patch Adams, Bruce Almighty), working as editor and executive producer on his first feature documentary I Am (2010, http://iamthemovie.net), to be released in theatres in the US in February 2011. Her first feature documentary, A Cow at My Table (1998), won 6 international awards and explores Western attitudes towards meat and farm animals and the heated battle between animal rights activists and the meat industry. Her previous work includes the experimental short Skinned shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and as editor of the documentaries Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage (1999) and Let It Ride (2006). She is also the editor of the book Making Video 'In': The Contested Ground of Alternative Video on the West Coast. She has taught at the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver and was the Programming Director of Video Inn, Vancouver’s independent video artist-run centre. Abbott lives on a small permaculture farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, with her large blended family of seven, their dog and no cattle.

Artist Code: 615

Videography

A Cow at My Table

1998, 90:00 minutes, colour, English

Skinned

1993, 05:50 minutes, colour, English

Critical Writing

Documentary tells a story most of us would rather miss
by Tracy Tjaden. Winnipeg Free Press, Sept. 17, 1999.
1611: Jennifer Abbott's A Cow At My Table
by Warren Arcan. Fuse, June 1997, v. 20, no. 3.
Not a cow you would want at your table: Jennifer Abbott charged...
by Nicholas Read. Vancouver Sun, July 23, 1996.
Twenty Bold, Brash and Beautiful Years
by Lynn Wanyeki. Fuse, Spring 1994, v. 17, no. 3.
Guerilla Television/Pirate TV
by Paul Wong. Making Video "In": the contested ground of alternative video on the west coast, 1994. Toronto: Video In Studios, 1994.