Marcia Jarmel & Ken Schneider

The PatchWorks Team

Principal Funders

PatchWorks Films explores contemporary social issues through intimate character stories, and builds innovative partnerships for their use with educators, NGOs, and community partners. Their award-winning documentaries have been broadcast worldwide and shown at museums, libraries, schools, universities, community centers, street corners, conferences, and film festivals.

Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider founded PatchWorks in 1994. Their most recent feature, Speaking In Tongues aired on PBS, won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, and is a catalyst for changing language education in public schools throughout the world. Their previous films include the ITVS-funded Born in the U.S.A., which aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and was hailed as the “best film on childbirth” by the former director of maternal health at the World Health Organization.

Ken Schneider is producer, editor and sound recordist for PatchWorks. He has also edited 25 feature-length films, about war and peace, artists’ lives, American history, and contemporary social issues. Films he edited have won Emmys, a Peabody, a Columbia-Dupont, IDA (International Documentary Association) awards, an Indie Spirit, top awards at Sundance and other major festivals, and been nominated for an Oscar. See kenschneidereditor.net for details.

Ken co-edited Regret To Inform, an Oscar nominee that the New York Times described as “unforgettable … exquisitely filmed, edited and scored.” His films have appeared on PBS’ American Masters, POV, Independent Lens, on HBO, and in television and film festivals worldwide.

Ken’s collaborations include works with dancer/performance artist, Nina Wise; solo theater performer, Charlie Varon; Academy Award-winning filmmakers, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman; and Academy Award-winning sound designer, Richard Beggs, among others.

Ken lectures at San Francisco City College, the SF Art Institute, and NYU.

A partial list of his projects includes: Regret To Inform, Have You Heard From Johannesburg (Emmy winning series on South Africa), The Good War and Those Who Refused To Fight It, Orozco: Man of Fire, Ralph Ellison: An American Journey, Store Wars, School Colors, Bolinao 52, Ancestors in the Americas, and Speaking in Tongues.

Marcia Jarmel has been producing and directing documentaries for PatchWorks for the past 18 years. In addition, she distributes and runs engagement campaigns for PatchWorks' films. The 2009 PBS film, Speaking In Tongues, supported by ITVS, CAAM, and LPB, continues to circulate as a valuable resource for schools, public libraries, colleges, and non-profit organizations around the world. The ITVS-funded Born in the U.S.A. continues to engage families, communities, and health care professionals twelve years after its national PBS broadcast.

Marcia’s first film, The Return of Sarah’s Daughters examined the tradeoffs between faith and identity through the stories of secular young women drawn to Orthodox Judaism. The hour-long documentary broadcast on PBS, won a CINE Golden Eagle and a National Educational Media Network Gold Apple. It screened on international public television, and at the American Cinematheque, International Documentary Film Festival, Women in the Director’s Chair, Cinequest and numerous other film festivals. The F Word, a whimsical short combining animation and interviews, screened at KQED’s Living Room Festival, AFI’s VideoFest, and the Judy Chicago film series at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Her short film, Collateral Damage, a mother’s lament about the human costs of war, was included in the showcase Underground Zero: Filmmakers Respond to 9/11. Jarmel’s additional credits include producing and directing films for the San Francisco World Music Festival, co-editing the Academy-award nominee, For Better or For Worse, and assistant producing the Academy Award nominees, Berkeley in the Sixties and Freedom On My Mind.

Jarmel works as a consulting producer and an engagement and outreach consultant for social issue documentary films, and has been a resident at Working Films Content + Intent Doc Institute, the Kopkind Colony, the Fledgling Fund’s Reel Education and Reel Engagement residencies, and BAVC. She has guest lectured at Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and New York University.

PatchWorks’ films have been supported by ITVS, the Center for Asian American Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, the Fledgling Fund, the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the California and Illinois Humanities Councils, BAVC, and many other foundations and private donors. See individual film pages for details.

Jarmel and Schneider live in San Francisco with their two teenage sons.