About
Siskel/Jacobs Productions is a Chicago-based documentary production company headed by Emmy-winning filmmakers Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel. Since its launch in 2005, SJP has built a reputation for making engaging, entertaining films that tackle vital stories with integrity, complexity, emotion, and humor.
Most recently, Greg and Jon co-directed/produced The Here Now Project, which weaves together self-shot video from a single year—no narration, no talking heads—to create an unprecedented record of the impact climate change is already having on ordinary people around the globe. The Here Now Project screened at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, and will have its world festival premiere at Hot Docs in April.
Prior to that, Greg and Jon co-directed The Road Up, which follows four participants in a Chicago job-training program as they seek hope and a pathway out of poverty. The Road Up, premiered in October 2020 at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Documentary. In 2018, Greg and Jon co-directed (with Danny Alpert) No Small Matter, the first feature documentary to explore the power and potential impact of early childhood education. No Small Matter helped move the needle on the issue at a national scale through nearly two-thousand screenings and an ambitious impact campaign.
In 2016, SJP produced the documentary Unexpected Justice: The Rise of John Paul Stevens, which premiered on WTTW in Chicago and aired on over 200 PBS stations around the country. Jon and Greg also served as the U.S. Executive Producers of 1916: The Irish Rebellion, a landmark, three-part documentary series, narrated by Liam Neeson, commemorating the centennial of the Easter Rising. The series, which aired around the world in 2016, won the American Public Television Programming Excellence Award, along with the Irish Film and Television Academy’s award for best documentary series.
In 2010, Greg and Jon produced and directed their acclaimed first feature, Louder Than a Bomb, which follows four Chicago-area high school poetry teams as they prepare to compete in the world’s largest youth slam. The winner of 17 festival prizes, including 10 audience awards, Louder Than a Bomb was hailed as “one of the 10 best documentaries of 2011” by Roger Ebert, and received a perfect 100% rating on rottentomatoes.com. In January of 2012, Louder Than a Bomb had its world television premiere on the Oprah Winfrey Network as an official selection of the “OWN Documentary Club”. The film was also selected for the U.S. State Department’s 2011 American Documentary Showcase, and received the 2011 Humanitas Prize for documentaries.
In 2008, SJP produced the Emmy-winning History Channel special 102 Minutes That Changed America, which reconstructs—in real time—the events of 9/11 in New York City, using only sound and video from that morning. More than five million viewers tuned in to the premiere, making it the most-watched special in the network’s history, and the program has now been seen by over forty million viewers worldwide. 102 Minutes won three Primetime Emmys, including Outstanding Nonfiction Special, as well as the Most Innovative Program Award at the 2009 History Makers International Summit, a CINE Masters Series Award, a Silver Telly, and a FOCAL International Award. It was also named the Best Nonfiction TV Episode of 2008 by iTunes.
SJP produced six episodes of the groundbreaking “Witness” series for the National Geographic Channel, including Witness: Katrina, which won the 2011 News and Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Historical Programming. Jon and Greg also wrote, directed, and produced Head On, a two-hour special about the obsessive subculture of “team demolition derby” in Joliet, Illinois, which aired on Discovery in December 2006. In March 2009, Siskel/Jacobs Productions was named to Realscreen’s “Global 100″—its annual list of the world’s most influential factual production companies.
SJP has also executive produced two documentary shorts: Memorial, directed and produced by Jon Siskel, about the July 4, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois; and Grace, about breast cancer, tattoos, and the battle begins when everyone else thinks the war is over, directed and produced by Rachel Pikelny.
In addition to its film and television work, SJP continues to produce high-quality short videos for corporate and non-profit clients, which have included Google, Eli Lilly, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ounce of Prevention Fund, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Driehaus Museum, and PEAK6.
