About PatchWorks
Stories from the Inside


Marcia Jarmel & Ken Schneider
Partners in PatchWorks since 1995, Marcia Jarmel (director, producer, writer) and Ken Schneider (co-producer, editor) produce films that explore contemporary social issues through intimate character stories. Their award-winning films have been broadcast around the world and have screened at museums, film festivals, schools, universities, public libraries, and for community groups.

Support for their films comes from organizations such as the Independent Television Service (CPB), the California and Illinois Humanities Councils, the Lucius & Eva Eastman Fund, the Film Arts Foundation, Pacific Pioneer Fund, the Fund for Jewish Documentary Film, the William Bingham Foundation, and many private donors.  

Marcia Jarmel has produced and directed two feature documentaries and several shorts for PatchWorks Films. Her current project, Speaking in Tongues, tells the story of three children becoming bilingual and bicultural in the public schools. Her two previous feature documentaries The Return of Sarah's Daughters, and Born in the U.S.A. aired on public television.Her outreach campaign for Born  resulted in hundreds of women's health advocates and educators across the country using the film to improve maternity care.  She is also developing Maternal Mystique, telling 50 years of turbulent history  as feminism collides with the popular culture of motherhood, and Luna, an animated environmental tale for children. Other credits include co-editing the Academy award nominee, For Better or For Worse, and assistant producing the Academy nominees Berkeley in the Sixties and Freedom on My Mind.  She also helped develop scripts for Song of Our Children, —profiling the struggles of children and youth with disabilities seeking inclusion in schools, Streams of Gold—a grandson's journey to discover the legacy of his grandfather's gold mine in Latin America, and Liewella—looking at the efforts to save the culture of a Micronesian people.

In addition to his work editing and co-producing PatchWorks' films, Ken Schneider has edited numerous films exploring American lives, war and peace, and portraits of artists. He co-edited the Peabody Award-winning Regret To Inform (Academy and national Emmy nominee, Indie Spirit Award, IDA award for distinctive use of archival footage, Sundance Film Festival award). Other projects include Freedom Machines, a P.B.S. P.O.V. special looking at the convergence of disability, technology and civil rights; Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, a PBS' American Masters program that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; The Good War and Those who Refused to Fight it, about WWII conscientious objectors; Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, aired as a PBS special; Ancestors in the Americas, Part 2: Pioneers in the American West, profiling the Chinese-American Experience; and Frontline's Columbia-Dupont-winning School Colors, a look at integration and segregation, 40 years after the Brown v. Board decision.. All aired on national public television. Ken has consulted on dozens of other documentaries and lectures at San Francisco City College, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Film Arts Foundation.