Lights, camera, action »
Jennifer Friend
Associate professor
School of Education
Friend is the co-founder, along with her husband, Timothy Friend, an M.F.A. student at UMKC, of Big Atom Productions, where she writes, directs and acts in narrative and documentary films. The pair recently finished production on the short film The Rest of Her, and it won the grand prize in the 2012 AMC Theatres Kansas City FilmFest/KCWIFT competition. They will submit the short film for screenings at film festivals in 2013. “I love acting, and I’m always looking for weird characters to play,” she says. “In Cadaverella, I played four different roles. I changed my appearance so drastically that one of the other actors didn’t recognize me, and he said, ‘Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met.’ I love the creativity and collaboration in the filmmaking process. It allows me to reconnect with my artistic side and provides a new venue for the organizational planning skills that I use in my day job.”