PatchWorks Films explores contemporary social issues through intimate character stories, and builds innovative partnerships for their use with educators, NGOs, and community partners. Their award-winning documentaries have been broadcast worldwide and shown at museums, libraries, schools, universities, community centers, street corners, conferences, and film festivals. Husband and wife team, Marci
a Jarmel and Ken Schneider founded PatchWorks Films in 1994 and have since made award-winning films for public television, film festivals, museums, community centers, public libraries, and educational institutions worldwide. Their most recent film and fourth feature documentary collaboration, Havana Curveball, won the Best Documentary at the Boston International Kids Film Festival, Special Jury Award at the Olympia Int’l Film Festival and was selected for the School of Library Journal’s Best of 2014. In Havana Curveball, the filmmakers explore the story of their son, Mica, who faces extraordinary challenges when he sets his heart on donating equipment to young baseball players in Cuba. The film takes viewers on a deeply felt journey that shows just how complicated it can be to do a simple good deed. Their previous films include Speaking In Tongues aired on PBS, which won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, and is a catalyst for changing language education in public schools throughout the world and the ITVS-funded Born in the U.S.A., which aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and was hailed as the “best film on childbirth” by the former director of maternal health at the World Health Organization.
