JEN
TARNATE

Biography

Jen is a Filipina filmmaker & artist whose work aims to highlight the struggles and the sacred in the everyday. Meditative and intimate, her work touches on memory, personal history, and explorations of other ways of looking, listening, and being.

She graduated with a fully-funded multiple Masters Degree in Documentary Film Directing from DocNomads at TheUniversity of Theatre and Film Arts Budapest (SZFE) in Hungary, Lusófona Universityin Portugal, and LUCA School of Arts in Belgium.

With 10 years of combined experience in directing and producing documentaries and entertainment programs for television and digital platforms in the Asia-Pacific and Europe, she has worked with Netflix Asia, Discovery Channel Asia, Channel News Asia, AXN Asia, History Channel Asia, Lifestyle Network Global (now Metro Channel), FYI Asia, and Sony Entertainment TV Asia. 

In 2018, she held her first solo photography exhibition on her long-term series, 'Notes From the Sea', which captures the strong relationship between the local surfing community and their environment in Baler, the birthplace of Philippine surfing. 

Her film, 'In the Name of Small Things', was screened in Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (TIDF) in 2022. Together with the group, Weekend Project, their documentary Pamana (Inheritance) has been showcased at the Visual Documentary Project film festival in Kyoto, Japan (2013), and Nations in Visions, Vol. 1.  in Manila, Philippines (2019). 

Currently, she is the lead curator of Cinemata, an independent video platform that holds space for films promoting human rights and addressing environmental issues. She also produces Pretty Good Podcast, a podcast on digital rights in the Asia-Pacific.

Jen is based in Manila, Philippines, and is available for projects globally.