Jon Else is an American documentary filmmaker.  Born in Worcester, Massachusetts and raised in Sacramento, California, Else studied two years at Yale before leaving to work in the civil rights movement in Mississippi and Alabama from 1964-1965. He served on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and then with the War on Poverty Sacramento. Else received his B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, and M.A. in Communication from Stanford University in 1974.

Else is best known for The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (1980), Cadillac Desert: Water and the Transformation Of Nature (1997), Sing Faster: The Stagehands’ Ring Cycle (2000), and Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic (2008). He was series producer and cinematographer for Henry Hampton’s Eyes On The Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1987). Else produced, directed, and photographed Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven (1989, re-released 2011) for the Sundance Institute, A Job at Ford’s for Hampton’s PBS series The Great Depression (1992), Palace of Delights: the Exploratorium for NOVA, and Open Outcry (2001), a PBS film about commodities traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Else shot and directed Inside Guantanamo with Bonni Cohen and executive produced “The Island President,” a independent feature about Mohamed Nasheed, president of The Maldives, for Actual Films. Else executive produced 2017 Sundance winner “The Force,” directed by Peter Nicks, produced by Linda Davis.

Else served as cinematographer on hundreds of documentaries for BBC, PBS, ABC, MTV, Arte, and HBO, and Netflix, several independent feature films, as well as dozens of commercials and music videos.  Programs include History Of Rock And Roll Who Are The DeBolts, Tupac: Resurrection, Alice Waters, Afghanistan: Hell of a Nation, Fire Wars, Food Inc., Last Call At the Oasis, John Adams Road, and Cooked.

He was director of the documentary program at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 1997 to 2014. He was a consulting professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University (1993-1996). He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (1988 to 1993), and has won four Emmys (for writing, producing, directing, and cinematography), several Columbia-DuPonts and Peabody Awards, as well as several Academy Award nominations, the Prix Italia, and the Sundance Special Jury Prize, and Sundance Filmmaker’s Trophy. He is also the author of “True South: Henry Hampton and Eyes on the Prize, the Landmark Television Series the Reframed the Civil Rights Movement,’” published by Viking in 2017.

https://journalism.berkeley.edu/person/else/