About
Door Number 3 Productions
Door Number 3 Productions is an independent production company in Toronto Canada helmed by Lisa Jackson, one of Canada’s premiere filmmakers.
Lisa Jackson
Photo: Emily Cooper
Lisa Jackson’s award-winning work has screened at SXSW, Berlinale, Hotdocs, Tribeca, BFI London, Melbourne Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and broadcast widely. She’s made works ranging from current affairs to IMAX, animation to VR, and even a residential school musical. In 2021 she received the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Vanguard Award and in 2022 she was selected for a Chicken & Egg Award.
Her short Lichen screened at Sundance in 2020 and Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier is one of the top watched documentaries on CBC, won the 2017 imagineNATIVE Best Doc award, and was also co-produced by Lisa.
Her Webby-nominated VR Biidaaban: First Light premiered at Tribeca Storyscapes in 2018, exhibited internationally to 25,000+ people, and won a Canadian Screen Award (Canada’s Oscar), the second time she’s received this honour.
Transmissions, a 6000 square foot immersive multimedia installation and sister project to Biidaaban, premiered in Vancouver in 2019 and was featured on the cover of The Georgia Straight.
Through her company Door Number 3 Productions, she’s at work on hybrid feature Wilfred Buck, awarded the Sundance Sandbox Fund and Best Canadian Pitch at Hot Docs Forum 2021, and Mush Hole is a feature animation for adults based on true events. Supported by Telefilm and Harold Greenberg Fund and part of the 2020 TIFF Writers Studio and ACE Producers Lab, it’s a coming-of-age story for girls in a “prison” (residential school).
In 2016, she directed the VR Highway of Tears for CBC Radio’s The Current which was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award. In 2015 she was drama director for the 8 x 1 hour APTN/ZDF docudrama series 1491: The Untold Story Of The Americas Before Columbus, based on the bestselling book by Charles C. Mann, which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award.
She’s made more than 20 films, including CTV doc Reservation Soldiers, 1-hour doc How a People Live, and shorts Savage, Suckerfish and
Playback Magazine named Lisa one of Ten to Watch and she’s an alumna of the TIFF Talent and Writers Labs, Canadian Film Centre’s Directors Lab, IDFA Summer School, CFC/NFB/Ford Foundation’s Open Immersion VR Lab, and is a Fellow at the MIT Open Doc Lab. She has an MFA from York University (thesis prize) and is Anishinaabe from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.
See more about her past work at lisajackson.ca
Photo: Emily Cooper
Lisa Jackson’s award-winning work has screened at SXSW, Berlinale, Hotdocs, Tribeca, BFI London, Melbourne Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and broadcast widely. She’s made works ranging from current affairs to IMAX, animation to VR, and even a residential school musical.
Her short Lichen screened at Sundance in 2020 and Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier is one of the top watched documentaries on CBC, won the 2017 imagineNATIVE Best Doc award, and was also co-produced by Lisa.
Her Webby-nominated VR Biidaaban: First Light premiered at Tribeca Storyscapes in 2018, exhibited internationally to 25,000+ people, and won a Canadian Screen Award (Canada’s Oscar), the second time she’s received this honour.
Transmissions, a 6000 square foot immersive multimedia installation and sister project to Biidaaban, premiered in Vancouver in 2019 and was featured on the cover of The Georgia Straight.
Through her company Door Number 3 Productions, she’s in development on hybrid feature Wilfred Buck, awarded the Sundance Sandbox Fund, and is producing the feature documentary Ojiibikaan, winner of the 2020 Hot Docs Best Canadian Pitch and recipient of funding from Hot Docs Cross Currents and Nia Tero. Mush Hole is a feature animation for adults based on true events. Supported by Telefilm and Harold Greenberg Fund and part of the 2020 TIFF Writers Studio, it’s a coming-of-age story for girls in a “prison” (residential school).
In 2016, she directed the VR Highway of Tears for CBC Radio’s The Current which was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award. In 2015 she was drama director for the 8 x 1 hour APTN/ZDF docudrama series 1491: The Untold Story Of The Americas Before Columbus, based on the bestselling book by Charles C. Mann, which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award.
She’s made more than 20 films, including CTV doc Reservation Soldiers, 1-hour doc How a People Live, and shorts Savage, Suckerfish and
Playback Magazine named Lisa one of Ten to Watch and she’s an alumna of the TIFF Talent and Writers Labs, Canadian Film Centre’s Directors Lab, IDFA Summer School, CFC/NFB/Ford Foundation’s Open Immersion VR Lab, and was a Fellow at the MIT Open Doc Lab’s VR Conference. She has an MFA from York University (thesis prize) and is Anishinaabe from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.
See more about her past work at lisajackson.ca
Community
Lisa’s work extends into community, showing in galleries and museums as well as educational institutions and conferences. She’s a sought-after speaker and consultant, was a consulting programmer at Hot Docs, sits on the National Film Board of Canada’s Indigenous Advisory Committee, and was a contributor to the Indigenous Screen Office’s On-Screen Protocols and Pathways Guide. She’s presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Montreal’s C2 Conference, judicial conferences, and at events by the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Community Foundations Canada.
She’s sat on juries for arts councils and film festivals, has presented at many universities and was Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia and Queens University. For five years she was the Director Mentor for the National Screen Institute’s IndigiDocs program.
She received an Inspirit Foundation grant to create a law school impact campaign for her film Indictment: The Crimes Of Shelly Chartier and was Director of the Gladue Video Project, a pilot with Osgoode Hall Law School to make video profiles of Indigenous offenders for use in the court system. She is co-author, with NYU Professor Eugenia Kisin, of the chapter “Careful Images: Unsettling Testimony in the Gladue Video Project” for Insiders/Outsiders: The Cultural Politics and Ethics of Representation and Participation in Canada’s Media Arts (ed. Ezra Winton and Dana Claxton), scheduled for release in 2021.
Media
Apart from media coverage for her projects, Lisa has also been a media commentator. She’s been featured on CBC Radio’s The Current, in The Globe and Mail, Now Magazine, The Georgia Straight and others.
Selected Media
Now Magazine, “Doc Vanguard award recipient Lisa Jackson celebrates her community”
NOW Magazine, “Roundtable: Indigenous Directors Discuss the ‘Savages’ in the Coens’ Latest Western”
CBC article by Lisa Jackson, “When It Comes to Indigenous People, Canadian Justice is Not Blind”
The Globe and Mail, “Is Virtual Reality About to Break Through as an Artists’ Medium?”
CBC Radio The Current interview on Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier
Vice, “Why An Indigenous Filmmaker Directed a VR Documentary About the Highway of Tears”