Andrew Jenks

Photo: Ida Skadberg
OU Students listen to Andrew Jenks tell his story of
becoming a filmmaker.

     MTV filmmaker Andrew Jenks shared his journey to becoming a filmmaker with students at OU. Jenks told about his passion for filmmaking and the opportunities he’s been giving through MTV, as well as his struggles and obstacles along the way. His most recent project is finishing editing his second season of The World of Jenks. This TV episode shows Jenks moving in with different people, such as an autistic boy, a homeless girl, a boxer, and several others.

     Filmmaking has helped Jenks show different walks of life to various audiences. He is not only impacting the lives of people who watch his movie and shows, but also the people he interacts with on the show. “His subjects, however, such as a young autistic man who was initially cautious of letting Jenks into his life, have generally warmed to him rather quickly,” said Nuzhat Naoreen, reporter for MTV.

     Jenks’ love for filmmaking began at a young age. He spent most of his time carrying around a camera and recording whatever he saw because his family moves around a lot. In college, Jenks’s grandpa was in a nursing home, which inspired Jenks to come up with an idea for a documentary. He called countless nursing homes to ask permission to live and film a documentary about the lifestyle of the elderly. The only nursing home that would allow him to do this inspired him to start his career as a filmmaker.

    “I just got in a habit of loving to tell stories,” Jenks said. “That’s why I actually enjoy doing this thing, it’s cool for me to tell stories in a format that I’m not used to.” Jenks talked about how each person he lived with, left him with a new perspective. “When I was homeless for 10 days…living on the streets and in the woods, following this 21 year-old girl who was totally alone, that’s an experience I’ll never forget,” said Jenks. His experiences not only gave him a new perspective, but also open the eyes of his viewers. “You don’t always take time to think about what an autistic person goes through from day to day and what difficulties they struggle with; what we think a homeless person goes through is totally different from what actually happens and there aren’t a whole lot of documentarians willing to go out and do that,” said Allison Mrasek, the CAC Speaker Bureau.

     Other than Jenks finishing season two of The World of Jenks, he is going to be traveling around the country to talk to students about the 2012 elections. Specifically, he’ll be asking what young adults are looking for in a candidate, how they’re feeling about the election, etc. Then he’ll be tracking down the candidates and bringing that message to them. Additionally, he’s considering doing a documentary over the final two candidates and what they were like when they were younger and how it’s affected who they are today.



(Video: Matt Shaffer and Kelsey Hightower :16)
Students' response to speaker Andrew Jenks.