CIRCUS ELEPHANT FILMS / IMDb / IMDBVIDEO

CIRCUS ELEPHANT FILMS / Jehan Semper / LINKEDIN

CIRCUS ELEPHANT FILMS / Jehan Semper / IMDB

DIRECTOR

"This film is titled "ORCA: A True Story" because that's what it is. A true story. I am Jehan. I am the writer, producer, director, narrator and star of "ORCA: A True Story". I am the homeless street beggar who became a filmmaker. The story is true."

Jehan wrote the first of many scripts during her pre-teen years in Brooklyn, New York. She always knew that she'd make a film, she just didn't know when it would happen. In Summer 2017, it happened. She made a film. She's the writer, director and producer of "Orca: A True Story". It might seem unusual, but for Jehan, unusual is the usual.

In 1991, after GED'ing her way out of Stuyvesant High School and letting go of the dream of an Ivy League education to escape her childhood home, she attended a trade school in a small college town and learned how to utilize a computer. She promptly matriculated at the State University of New York school in that college town and started experimenting with something called HTML.

In January 2000, Jehan started working as a Web Developer at Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington. In 2003, Jehan continued her career as a consultant in Seattle until January 2006 when she decided that she would like to join the fraternity of college graduates and returned to New York City to complete her bachelor's degree in Philosophy & Law. After graduating, travelling and a bizarre chronology of events, Jehan was invited to return to New York City to share an apartment with an elderly family member and as they say in our cultural colloquialism, it was all downhill from there. During the cold Autumn of 2011, Jehan was homeless. Luckily for her, an Occupy Wall Street pioneer invited her to Zuccotti Park and offered to educate her as to how to survive being homeless.

When asked about the experience of making "Orca", Jehan says, "Orca: A True Story" is true. Every experience I have had in this odyssey of living on the street and sleeping in doorways is the proper subject matter for the film, so there's lots of material. But, the fact that something is true doesn't necessarily mean that it's relevant to the story of "Orca". The story of "Orca" is about what it takes to "get up" from being homeless, how I chose to do that and the experiences, feelings and thoughts during that process. When I decided to make the film, I just thought, "What do you need to make a movie? You need a camera and you need people. I have a camera in my smartphone and I have people who are willing to sit and talk with me," so I just did it."

Jehan is currently living in Tallahassee, Florida supported by the money she received while filming "Orca". With two films in pre-production, "Yes" and "Afterlife", as well as a new web series, "Survival Thoughts", Jehan is learning, planning and working.

"I'm writing, casting, preparing and looking forward to making more films. When I first started writing scripts during elementary school, I didn't know how I would get the films made, but I figured I should continue writing the scripts so that I'd be prepared when the opportunity presented itself. That's the way I've always done everything in my life. I just work at it. When I see something I don't know, I learn it. There's a lot to learn and I love it. The learning curve while making "Orca" is about the same as the learning curve when I first started working at Amazon and that was about the same as the learning curve at Occupy Wall Street when I was learning how to survive being homeless, but I did it. This film is titled "ORCA: A True Story" because that's what it is. A true story. I am Jehan. I am the writer, producer, director, narrator and star of "ORCA: A True Story". I am the homeless street beggar who became a filmmaker. The story is true."

CIRCUS ELEPHANT FILMS