Jennifer DeLia
Jennifer Renée DeLia (born September 30, 1979) is an American screenwriter, director, actress, artist, and humanitarian. She is currently based in lower Manhattan where she operates her production company Poverty Row Entertainment.
Life
Jennifer has worked for many years in the film industry in physical production on major feature films such as Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center (Nicolas Cage and Maggie Gyllenhaal) and internationally acclaimed director Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights (Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman). Jennifer secured financing and was an Associate Producer on Explicit Ills directed by Mark Webber (Rosario Dawson, Lou Taylor Pucci, Paul Dano) which won the Audience Award at South by Southwest in 2008 and was theatrically released by Peace Arch. She secured financing and Line Produced the award-winning feature documentary Slingshot Hip Hop that premiered at Sundance in 2008. Jennifer produced and acted in the short film Abracadabra, directed by Julie Pacino (eldest daughter of actor Al Pacino) . The short screened in several international cities, including Cannes, Hollywood, and São Paulo.
As a director, Jennifer has made various short format projects her first being the short film, I Am an Island, in 2008. I Am an Island is based on her father's memoirs and stars James Wirt, Margherita Missoni and Josephine de La Baume, and played in Cannes, London, New York, and Los Angeles. Jennifer studied acting intensively at Sanford Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse in New York.
Jennifer's obsessive curiosity about art and pop culture and the two's symbiotic relationship lead her to David LaChapelle and Berlin in 2006. She acquired sponsorship for the biggest art exhibition celebration Berlin could remember seeing. The celebration hosted 4000 people in East Berlin's Rodeo Club, a 19th-century dome building with DJ Dmitry (Deee-Lite) performing before a tower of love dolls. David had for the first time premiered inside the Helmut Newton Foundation in West Berlin.
Previous to her stint in Berlin, Jennifer spent three months in Brazil with the youth in the slums, researching the sex trade, and also bringing LaChapelle's social documentary Rize to the correlating communities in Brazil. Her work in Brazil brought about incredible alliances that still continue to grow – one being an exchange with MV Bill’s (biggest rapper and social activist from City of God in Rio) youth organization CUFA and the Los Angeles-based kids from RIZE.
Following Berlin, Jennifer produced the fashion line of Traver Rains and Richie Rich, HEATHERETTE’S biggest Fashion Week After-Party to date. In attendance, Danity Kane, Nick Cannon, Britney Spears, Cuba Gooding Jr, and more, at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.
The collection of Jennifer's aforementioned experiences is what breathes life into her directorial debut feature film, Billy Bates. This film is more than a film as it is a multi–layered experience about the cycle of art and life, allowing the viewer to travel authentically and organically through the path of the artist process. She, as the unseen interviewer in the film, is asking Billy the probing questions that guide him through this deeply emotional journey, all the while Jennifer learning about her self and her own questions dealing with