Martha Jeffries
Martha Jeffries (born 1978) is a New Zealand filmmaker, specialising in climate communications, science-related media and advocacy. Jeffries is known for her work directing and producing episodes for the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Years of Living Dangerously[2] for National Geographic, the NHNZ series Dynamic Planet screened on PBS and Arte, and OceanXplorers[3] from filmmaker James Cameron, also for National Geographic and Disney Plus.[4] Early and personal lifeMartha Jeffries was born in Wellington New Zealand to parents Bill Jeffries, a former New Zealand Labour Party politician, and Shona Jeffries, a teacher. She trained as a flute player, completing a degree in classical music, and had embarked on a career in music until her mid-twenties when she began film and TV production work.[5] After a period of living and working in Sweden, Denmark and Austria,[5] Martha moved to New York in 2010 to be with her partner, New Zealand/American artist Martin Basher, where they had twin daughters born in 2018.[1] They have lived in New Zealand since 2022, but maintain a property in the Catskills region of New York State.[6] Filmmaking careerIn her early 20's, Jeffries taught herself film direction from books and began directing music videos,[6] producing for New Zealand music chart-topping hip hop artist Chong Nee, Dei Hamo,[6] Eden Mulholland and later The Juan Maclean.[7] She directed her first television series at age 26, a New Zealand travel show called Are We There Yet and beginning in 2008 Jeffries directed five seasons of the international food and travel series World Kitchen.[5] In 2015 she met TV producers David Gelber and Joel Bach, known for their work on current affairs show 60 Minutes,[8] and was offered a directing role on their Emmy Award-winning documentary series Years of Living Dangerously,[6] featuring James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger as executive producers. She directed and produced two episodes in the second series, released in 2016, focusing on ocean warming (episode: Collapse of the Oceans) and carbon pricing (episode: Priceless).[2] Since working on Years of Living Dangerously, Jeffries has focused primarily on climate-change and science-related shows, including Invisible Killers, Dynamic Planet[9] and OceanXplorers, hosted by James Cameron.[3] Jeffries has directed and produced work across all seven continents.[5][10] ActivismJeffries has said that the decade she spent filming travel shows in sometimes-volatile locations[3] revealed to her the impacts of climate change around the world:
Jeffries has declared that action on climate change is her highest priority and the issue is "the greatest challenge of our time".[8]
She also advocates for more women to be working as directors in the film and television sector, saying "the rates of women working as directors at every level are dismal" despite relatively equal proportions of men and women graduating from film school.[12] Jeffries also mentors young women looking to enter the film industry.[13] Other workMartha has spoken widely on climate storytelling, including at a UN conference at the Vatican.[14] She was a founding board member and executive advisor of Good Energy,[15][16] a Los Angeles-based non-profit focused on getting more and better climate stories into Hollywood, and she has been on the jury of the Oceanic Global short film festival.[17] FilmographyTV Series
Music videos
References
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