Biography

Matthew Jones graduated from Biola University with a degree in Cinema and Media Arts as well as a graduate of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola. When he started at Biola in 2005 he was already an award-winning filmmaker thanks to two films he made in high school. Jones garnered his highest accolade to date in 2006 for his movie Be the Man, which was filmed during his freshmen year at Biola. The film, awarded the 2006 DGA Student Film Award: African-American, has screened at festivals across the country including the Urbanworld VIBE Film Festival and the Black Harvest International Film Festival in Chicago. Be the Man also had its TV premiere on BET's "Lens on Talent" short film competition.

Some of Jones's other achievements are no less impressive. In the summer of 2006, Jones worked with FGW Productions under executive producer Stephanie Frederic. With Frederic, Jones did PR work at the 2006 BET Awards and functioned as an Associate Producer on a BET special for the film Miami Vice. Because of this work, he was hired as a Writer and Producer for the Idlewild BET special. In the summer of 2007 Matthew worked as a Disney/ABC Production Intern on ABC's General Hospital. That same summer he interned at Cooke Pictures as a script reader/production assistant. In the Fall of 2007, Warner Bros TV at New Deal Productions experienced Matthew's help as an assistant to the Head of Television Programming, Kelly Goode.

In Spring 2008 Matthew got his first experience on a feature film set as the assistant to Eric C. Rhone, the Producer of Chicago Pulaksi Jones, Directed by Cedric the Entertainer and Starring Kel Mitchell. He returned to Warner Bros in the summer of 2008 as a WB Stars Intern working at New Line Cinema in Development under SVP Walter Hamada.

His thesis project, Choices, was shot on Super 16 film with film donated from Kodak thanks to the Kodak Emerging Filmmaker Grant, part of the DGA Award. This film was able to be completed when Jones was a recipient of a $5000 Post-Production grant from the Caucus Foundation. 'Choices' has screened in film festivals across the country.

In 2009 Matthew took a step from directing to produce. His last project at Biola was as the Producer on the Biola Film "A Quiet Fire". The film made it's film festival premiere at the "Action On Film Festival" in Pasadena, CA where it was nominated for Best Short Film, Best Supporting Actor and Best Inspirational Film. The film won the award for "Best Inspirational Film".

Matthew is in development of new shorts and features.
- IMDb mini biography by: Matthew Jones