Jess Gell
Area: Tooting
Type: Artist / Individual
Art form: Art, Digital, Film, Installation, Photography, Poetry, Writer
Biography / Artist statement
Jess Gell is a documentary Director, Assistant Producer and Multidisciplinary Artist based in Tooting. Her documentaries have focused on topics ranging from the lives of artists to unearthing personal history including Jean Cooke: Delight In the Thing Seen and The Day Frank Died. She is particularly interested in personal relationships with memory and loss, and mental health. Jess has directed and edited several films for arts and cultural heritage organisations and mental health charities in Wandsworth, Croydon, Lambeth & Eastbourne. Her commissions include a series of shorts for Inside the Artists Studio (Art on a Postcard / War Child UK), short documentaries for St Wilfrid’s Hospice, short documentary The Power of Words (Status Employment), promotional shorts for the WomanUp! Podcast and documentaries surrounding Indian classical dance and cultural heritage with Apsara Arts. As a Researcher and Assistant Producer she has worked with Emmy/BAFTA-winning Producers and Directors including a documentary for Foxtrot Films about women war artists for Sky Arts (2024) and Hostile (2022), a BAFTA-recognised documentary by Galeforce Films about the hostile environment for migrant communities in the UK. Jess is also an alumna of the Grierson DocLab 2020 training programme. She received First-Class Honours in BA Film and Television at UAL in 2017.