Biography

"Vendiola's work is both highly stylized and casually transgressive." -Newcity

Jim is an award-winning filmmaker whose work frequently explores heartache, longing, liminality, eros, and pathos. As a Filipino-American with immigrant parents, his work also ponders themes of identity, otherness, and alienation. He has been named one of Newcity's FILM 50 of 2016, 2018, and 2020, alongside such production notables as Dick Wolf ("Law & Order"), The Wachowskis (The "Matrix" Saga), and Steve James ("Hoop Dreams"). He is a 2021 3Arts "Make a Wave" grantee, and grand award winner of the Inaugural NewNarratives Program from NewFilmmakers LA and WarnerMedia OneFifty.

Jim's psychological horror short, "Violets," which reframes the genre's more common predator/prey dynamic, received the 22nd Chicago Underground Film Festival's Audience Award. His follow up, "Library Hours," is a reimagined approach to vintage erotica that favors empathy over objectification, and stylistic purpose over the male gaze. Reviewing its sold-out West Coast Premiere at HBO's Outfest LA, one critic wrote, "The material in the hands of a lesser writer or director could have been exploitative, sexually gratuitous and even insensitive, but under Jim Vendiola is anything but."

As of Q3 2022, his horror-comedy-romance called "Pretty Pickle" World Premiered at Chattanooga Film Festival, will have its International Premiere at Fantasia Film Festival, and its West Coast Premiere at HollyShorts. He is also developing a neo-noir crime thriller limited series, "Argus" (co-created with LeLe Park), for WarnerMedia OneFifty.
- IMDb mini biography by: Kinosaur Films