Jonathan Light
Filmmaker · Writer · Producer
Filmmaker · Writer · Producer
Short Film · 2025
A cellist who doesn't want to practice meets a tech investor with a crazy proposition, and learns there are no shortcuts to excellence.
Short Film · 2016
A young girl. A cold day. An unexpected journey.
Commercial
Commercial for an online music education company, produced, written and directed by me.
Promotional Video
Promotional video celebrating 100 years of the Juilliard Pre-College Division.
6 Projects
Psychological Thriller
A failed pianist from a family of successful classical musicians returns to her childhood home to settle her deceased parents' estate — and finds herself forced to reckon with her family's demons and come to terms with her own failures.
Sci-fi Dark Comedy
A cellist who doesn't want to practice meets a tech investor with a crazy proposition, and learns there are no shortcuts to excellence. Feature-length version of the short film.
Biopic
The life of Brian Epstein — the man who discovered the Beatles.Charts his troubled life that was defined by success, celebrity, and music, but marred by addiction, depression, and loneliness.
Political Dark Comedy
An Israeli spy and an Egyptian journalist are tasked with stopping an eccentric billionaire who has decided to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict by building a new country from scratch in Northern Canada. Their mission becomes even more complicated when they find themselves drawn not just to his liberal utopia, but - forbiddingly - to each other.
Coming-of-Age Dramedy
Two stubborn, crotchety fathers-in-law — one artsy and emotionally unstable, the other aloof and matter-of-fact — find themselves stuck together on a cross-country trip together. Based on events that almost happened.
Comedy
A driven-yet-deluded English waitress is convinced Hollywood is waiting for her, but while her extraordinary looks and complete absence of ethical compass gets her foot in the door of the independent film world, she then proceeds to systematically destroy everything.
7 Projects
Hour-long Drama
Mozart in the Jungle meets The Wire. A drug-addicted violinist, a fiery social worker, and an enigmatic drug dealer meet at the intersection of drugs and music in the City of Brotherly Love. Each has their individual struggles, brought on by both their own flaws as well as the forces arrayed against them, and each is connected to each other through addiction and classical music. Plus, they all live and work in Philadelphia…which, at the end of the day, can be a pretty small town.
Hour-long Sci-Fi Drama
In our not-too-distant future, those with means are connected to the new Internet via a brain implant, while those without live a basic and analog existence. Lia Powell - a corporate executive single-mother with a tumultuous past - finds a network anomaly originating from the poverty of the Valley, an anomaly that should be impossible. Her discovery leads her to a regular man with a powerful trait that could upset the new balance of power and change Lia's life – and the world – forever.
Hour-long Drama
Grey's Anatomy meets Fame. After her tragic mistake of turning 45 derails her Hollywood career, supremely talented Lindsay Cooper joins the faculty of New York's most prestigious drama school — and is immediately thrown into a world of old rivalries, sex, drugs, and DRAMA, courtesy of students and faculty alike.
Limited Series
Based on the true story of Noah Kaplinsky, a young doctor, and Zahava, his resourceful wife, who became separated after Germany's invasion of Russia during World War II. An incredible tale of two regular people who survived the ultimate horror thanks to ingenuity, resourcefulness, and luck.
Hour-long Dramedy
The Matrix meets Defending Your Life meets Hitchhiker's Guide. Stralmia Bliglezod — Stacy, on Earth — is a citizen of the utopian planet Holt sentenced to GAOL: a rehabilitation program that drops prisoners into a full human life on Earth. Thrive, and you're rehabilitated. Struggle, cause pain, or die — and you never know which chance will be your last.
Half-hour Comedy
Friends meets Sex and the City for the diverse professional set. Four rock-climbing partners in New York - an entrepreneur, an IT manager, a cinematographer, and an ER doctor — navigate friendship, ambition, and the dual pull of mountains and concrete.
Original Series
An original series adaptation of Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes' Dragon Corsairs trilogy.
If you'd like to read a bunch of random stuff that has successfully escaped my consciousness over the years, check out my brain repository here: lightjon.substack.com
I am a writer, director, producer, editor and middle-manager — sometimes all at the same time — in the worlds of film, TV, advertising, and corporate media. I began life as an opera singer, then pivoted to theatre and film a few years into adulthood because I felt there wasn't enough rejection in my life.
Projects in development — another word for "in need of financing" — include: NANDA DEVI, with Tarsem Singh attached to direct; CADENCE, a thriller set in the world of classical music; THE DRESSMAKER, a biopic of Beatles' manager Brian Epstein; and THE BREATH, an original series adaptation of Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes' Dragon Corsairs trilogy. I've served as a story consultant for several projects in the US and UK, and have had original television projects in development with A+E Studios and OVL Media in Beijing, only one of which turned out to be a real company.
My most recent short film, HELPING HANDS, starring Broadway actor Derek Klena and renowned cellist Zlatomir Fung, recently screened at the Monmouth Film Festival in NJ and is currently making the rounds.
As a theater actor and director, I've devised and directed productions in several subterranean venues without air conditioning, including The White Devil, Hamlet, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln, and the site-specific Scotch and Poison. I served as assistant to director Jo Bonney on the Off-Broadway production of Neil LaBute's Some Girl(s), during which I was fortunate enough to work as an acting coach to Fran Drescher. (Yes, that Fran Drescher.)
For some reason, I hold two MFAs: one in Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and one in Writing and Producing from the TV Writer's Studio at LIU, under the tutelage of Norman Steinberg (of blessed memory) and Stephen Molton.
I am one of the few people in the world to have been rejected from both the Drama and Music divisions of The Juilliard School. I am, however, a proud alum of its Pre-College Division, and they treat me like a real alum — so I'll take it.
I currently serve as Director of Production for TeamPeople, a national creative services company. My clients have included Bank of America, The Juilliard School, Novartis, The College Board, and the American Alpine Club. I spent five formative years as a writer, director, and editor in the originals video division of Yahoo! — before internet video was really even a thing. Yahoo's well-documented decline generally coincided with my tenure, and was therefore likely my fault.