Christopher P. Jacobs produced and directed The Threat of the Mummy
on digital video from his own script, as well as photographing and editing the
production. He has been interested in all aspects of film since his junior high
school days when he bought an 8mm Brownie movie camera and started collecting
8mm and 16mm prints of classic films.
He later moved up to Bolex 8mm and 16mm movie cameras, making a number
of short films over the years. In college he attended the NEC/Warner Brothers
Summer Film Workshop, where he worked on the award-winning half-hour 16mm
docudrama Attentat.
The lure of film history eventually took precedence over an equal
interest in filmmaking, although in graduate school he did complete a
feature-length drama made on video (School Spirit), which aired on the local
public television affiliate, as well as short teleplays and films. Jacobs
earned a Master's Degree in Film and Dramatic Production Criticism from the
University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, where he now teaches “Introduction
to Film” as a senior lecturer.
When several local filmmaking opportunities suddenly happened to arise
in his home town of Grand Forks during the last half of the 1990s, Jacobs was
able to work briefly on the Coen brothers' Oscar-winning film, Fargo,
while the production had its headquarters in Grand Forks in March 1995. Three
years later he found himself Associate Producer for a low-budget
direct-to-video 16mm movie filmed in Grand Forks, entitled Dead and Too
Stupid to Know It. Within three months after shooting wrapped, he served as
Script Supervisor on an award-winning 35mm black & white independent
feature, Dead Dogs. These experiences helped motivate him to get back
into active filmmaking of his own again and resulted in The Threat of the
Mummy and its sequel, Vengeance of the Sorceress.
A movie theatre manager for over nine years until his company was
bought out by a larger chain, Jacobs still works as a part-time projectionist/
assistant manager at the former Midco 10 Theatre, now called the Carmike 10. In
addition he is the movies editor for The High Plains Reader, a regional
weekly tabloid arts & entertainment newspaper, and was on the building
committee for the 1998 renovation of the historic Empire Theatre into a home
for the North Valley Arts Council. In 1999 he finished a reference book project
for Greenwood Publishing as co-author with Donald W. McCaffrey, Guide to the
Silent Years of American Cinema. It is a one-volume critical encyclopedia
of notable silent films, directors, actors, and screenwriters. Jacobs presented
a paper on the history of Grand Forks movie theatres at the October 2001 Great
Plains History Conference. Jacobs' various interests also include desktop
publishing and graphic design; music listening, performance, recording, and
occasional composition (in a wide range of styles); live theatre (viewing,
performing, and directing); and ancient history (particularly ancient Egypt,
Greece, and Rome). For the past several years Jacobs has worked on and off at
writing a series of full-length novels in the historical romantic-adventure
genre. They are set in Egypt during the early 4th century A.D. amidst the
sociopolitical and religious turmoil of the late Roman Empire, while
Alexandria, Egypt with its world-famous library was the center of scholarly
research and Graeco-Roman civilization stretched from Britain to western Asia.
Other writing projects include several short stories (with publications in North
Country and Family Practice Quarterly), plays, and screenplays,
including an adaptation of his novel The Treasure of Isis.