Jenny Bowen
About
Biography
Filmography
Family & Companions
Biography
Film director Jenny Bowen has offered a limited output, but her work has won praise and awards at numerous film festivals including the 1982 Grand Jury Prize at the US (Sundance) Film Festival for "Street Music," her take on the elderly being dispossessed by "progress." Bowen's artistic inclinations came early in her native San Francisco. She wrote her first novel, "The Kingdom of the Kaleidoscope," an L Frank Baum-esque fantasy, at age 16, and went on to study creative writing at San Francisco State College. But acting became a lure, and Bowen began performing in regional theater productions in California and the Northwest, including at the famed American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and at San Diego's Old Globe.
During the early 1970s, she also began directing and staged the West Coast premiere of "The Criminals." Becoming interested in doing radio plays, Bowen joined Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope to learn more about sound technology as an apprentice recording engineer. Instead of directing radio plays, her interests turned to film. Her first idea for a film, which became "Street Music," came directly from demonstrations she witnessed in San Francisco when developers were dispossessing elderly tenants at a residential hotel. Bowen wrote the screenplay and shot the film for $650,000, with her husband serving as director of photography. While the film won awards, it gained limited distribution, coming too soon for the era of the independent films and multiplexes hungry for product. But Bowen was invited to participate at the Sundance Institute and developed "Animal Behavior." Shot in 1984-85 and featuring Armand Assante and Holly Hunter, it was never released because of a falling out between investors that resulted in a stalemated litigation. Bowen was next approached with the script for "The Wizard of Loneliness" (1988), about a city boy adjusting to country life when he is sent to live with his grandparents during World War II. Starring Lukas Haas and Sada Thompson, the project eventually became an "American Playhouse" presentation after a brief theatrical run.
Filmography
Director (Feature Film)
Writer (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Life Events
1962
Worked as an actor in regional theatres; also directed for the stage
1962
Completed first novel, "The Kingdom of the Kaleidoscope" (date approximate)
1981
Directed and wrote first feature film, "Street Music"
1985
Completed "Animal Behavior"; unreleased to do litigation
1988
Made "The Wizard of Loneliness" for American Playhouse
Companions
