Jonathan P. Smith

History

Mississippi native Jonathan P. Smith grew up listening to his parents and grandparents tell stories about life before electricity, telephones, and automobiles in rural Mississippi, which began his lifelong love of history and storytelling. His directorial work has featured at film festivals such as the Indie Grits Film Festival and Oxford Film Festival. His interest in telling actuality-based stories first took shape through a career in archaeology, which merged with a life-long love of photography and image-based stories to lead him to documentary filmmaking. He graduated from the University of Mississippi with a BA in anthropology, East Carolina University with a MA in anthropology, then completed the MFA program in Documentary Expression through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

Movies

Liquid Ice Ice Baby
Liquid Ice Ice Baby
Executive Producer
A struggling scientist grows increasingly insane as he attempts to complete his lifelong experiment.
Remembering Elwood Higginbottom
Remembering Elwood Higginbottom
Director
Elwood Higginbottom (also spelled Higginbotham) was lynched in Oxford, Mississippi in 1935. He wife and children fled and the memory of his lynching faded from the local community. A sequence of events beginning with the publication of the Equal Justice Initiative's Lynching in America Report brought his, and many other, lynchings back into public view. The Oxford-Lafayette community, along with Higginbottom descendants, placed a memorial to Elwood. This film tells some of the impacts on the family.
Sweet Sorghum
Sweet Sorghum
Director
A little bitter, a little sweet, sorghum is grown, pressed, and cook to create a traditional staple throughout the South, sweet sorghum molasses. There's more than just the taste behind why it's made, though. Two syrup-makers discuss how they learned the craft, why they do it, and why they think people buy their product.