Jackson holds a BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and an MFA in Film Production from York University.
Career
In 2004, Jackson wrote, directed and produced Suckerfish, a short experimental documentary about her relationship with her mother. The film, a mixture of photographs and animation, was screened at more than fifty festivals and was broadcast nationally in Canada, on CBC. From 1999 – 2006, Jackson was a director and producer on the media team at Open Learning Agency, as a script writer and carrying out field production for their online educational media. Her work aired on Knowledge Network, BC's educational broadcaster. From 2007 to 2013, she has worked as a story mentor with "Our World" Initiative and would travel to remote Aboriginal communities in BC and the Yukon to teach digital storytelling workshops. In these workshops, Jackson taught small groups of youth make films in First Language, using contemporary digital technology. In 2009 and 2014, Jackson worked with Embargo Collective, an ongoing international group of seven Indigenous artists who collaborate and challenge one another to create new films. Savage was the result of the first Embargo Collective in 2009 and was included in the 2013 exhibition Witnesses: Art and Canada's Indian Residential Schools, at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Intemperance premiered on October 26, 2014 at the closing night of imagineNATIVE. Since 2014, she has been working as the Director Mentor at National Screen Institute’s Aboriginal Documentary Program. Jackson has recently worked with special projects featuring the production of short films by First Nations filmmakers, including the National Film Board’s Vistas series, screened as part of the public presentations of the Canadian Olympics in Vancouver, and Knowledge Network’s Our First Voices television series on Indigenous languages in British Columbia.
2016 – Secret Location - Virtual reality piece on BC’s Highway of Tears for CBC’s “The Current.”
2017 – 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus - Drama director – 8-part, 1-hour docudrama mini-series for APTN and ZDF.
2017 – Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier
2018 – Biidaaban: First Light – Director
Awards
In 2004, Jackson received the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival Alliance Atlantis Mentorship award. In 2005, Jackson was awarded the Vancouver Arts Award for Emerging Media Artists. In 2008, Lisa Jackson's one-hour documentary Reservation Soldiers, for CTV's "W5 Presents", was awarded the Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival for Best Aboriginal Production, the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Talking Stick Film Festival, the Bronze Remi Award at Worldfest Houston 2008 for TV Special: Documentary. In 2010, Lisa Jackson's Cree-language musical Savage was the recipient of a Genie award for Best Short Film, the ReelWorld Film Festival Award in Outstanding Canadian Short Film, Leo Awards for Best Performance by an Actress in a short drama, Best Editing in a Short Drama, and the Yorkton Golden Sheaf: Best Multicultural Film award. In 2012, Jackson was the recipient of Playback Magazine's 10 to Watch Award in addition to The ReelWorld Festival Trailblazer Award. In 2012, Jackson was commissioned by imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival Stolen Sisters Digital Initiative to create Snare, originally screened as a one-minute performance-based film, later extended to 3.5 minutes. In 2019, after premiering at Tribeca Film Festival, Jackson won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Immersive Experience – Fiction for her VR piece Biidaaban: First Light.
