press

Portland Monthly
Oregon Arts Watch
More Devotedly podcast 
American Theatre Magazine
Conde Nast's "Them"
Oregon ArtsWatch
KBOO
LA Times
Orange County Register
Regal House Publishing podcast
Muskoka Queer Film Festival panel

Awards

Under The Stars International Film Festival, Best Short Film finalist, Spring 2021
Oregon Arts Commission grantee, Spring 2021
Oregon Humanities Social Practice Responsive Program grantee, Spring 2021
Queens NY International Film Festival selectee, Spring 2021
Barcelona International Film Festival, Best LGBTQ Film finalist, Spring 2021
Georgia Shorts Film Festival​ Best Music Video finalist, Spring 2021
Phoenix Film Festival selectee, Spring 2021
Lift-Off Global Indie Film Festival selectee, Spring 2021
Dallas Independent Film Festival, Best Music Video finalist, Spring 2021
Munich Music Video Awards Film Festival, Best Cinematography finalist, Spring 2021
Lonely Wolf London International Film Festival, Best Short Film finalist, Best Queer Film finalist, Best Poetic Film finalist, Best COVID Film finalist, and Best Screenplay finalist, Spring 2021
Pride Arts Film Festival - Quarterly Shorts selectee, Spring 2021
​Oregon Short Film Festival, Best Experimental Film finalist, Winter 2021
Muskoka Queer Film Festival selectee, Winter 2021
Los Angeles Indie Film Festival selectee, Winter 2021
Feel the Reel Film Festival, Best Music Video winner, Winter 2021
​Munich Music Video Awards selectee, Winter 2021
Indie Shorts Awards Cannes selectee, Winter 2021
Redwood Shorts & Scripts Festival selectee, Winter 2021
Oregon Arts Commission Arts Build Communities grantee, Winter 2021
Tin House Scholar, Winter 2021
IndieFEST Film Awards finalist, Winter 2021
Alder International Short Film Festival, Best Music Video winner, Autumn 2020
Open Window International Film Challenge, Best Music Video finalist, Autumn 2020
Queen Palm International Film Festival selectee, Autumn 2020
Across the Globe Film Festival selectee, Autumn 2020
​European Cinematography Awards finalist, Summer 2020
Canadian Cinematography Awards, Best Music Video winner, Summer 2020
Prague International Monthly Film Festival, Best Music Video winner, Summer 2020
Festigious Los Angeles Film Competition, Best Music Video winner, Summer 2020
Los Angeles Film Awards selectee, Summer 2020
Tracks Music Award selectee, Summer 2020
Goa Short Film Festival selectee, Autumn 2020
Oregon Cultural Trust grantee, Autumn 2020
Portland Area Theatre Alliance grantee, Autumn 2020
Honorable mention, Best Music Video, Prague International Monthly Film Festival, Autumn 2020
Finalist, New Letters' Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction, Autumn 2020
Portland Art Museum grantee, Summer 2020
Mellon Foundation grantee, Summer 2020
Production work featured on BBC, Summer 2020
Oregon Community Foundation grantee, Summer 2020
City of Beaverton grantee, Summer 2020
All Classical Radio grantee, Summer 2020  
Queer Hero award, Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest, Summer 2020
Jeremy Wilson Foundation grantee, Spring 2020
Literary Arts grantee, Spring 2020
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art grantee, Spring 2020
Collins Foundation grantee, Spring 2020
Multnomah County Cultural Coalition grantee, Spring 2020
Featured writer, Portland Underground Film Festival, Winter 2020
Tin House Scholar, Summer 2019
Regional Arts and Culture Council grantee, Spring 2019
Portland Underground Film Festival finalist, Winter 2018
Art of Autism selectee, Autumn 2018
Film Pulse Selects finalist, Autumn 2018
Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Best Short Film finalist, Spring 2018

residencies

Suttle Lodge artist in residence, Winter 2020
Arcosanti Urban Laboratory artist in residence, Fall 2019
Portland Parks and Recreation artist in residence, Spring 2019
Oregon State University's Trillium Project poet in residence, Spring 2019​

Reviews

for Lilies

• "Captures the real essence of our days." — Portia Munson
• "A dream-like, luscious, and vibrant film with cathartic truths. Stunning!" — Willie Little
• "Unsettling and tender." — Sarah Turner
• "Familiar, close, so real, so visceral. This poem is a gift." — Corbin LaMont
• "Empathetic, timely...present and inviting." — Rhiannon Flowers
• "A film filled with dream-like, luscious and vibrant video, mixed with unexpected insertions of contemporary animation. Their cathartic truth consists of vivid descriptions, as they bear witness to life during the days of Covid-19. Stunning!" — Willie Little
• "Each time I watch it, I find new moments to love...how queer survival can look so many different ways." — Renée Muzquiz
• "Poignant, luscious, devastatingly tender. What is life giving? A breath, a breeze, a bird, a garden, a gaze at the grocery store, a loaf of ancestral bread. What isn't this film so beautifully about?" — Kady Monroe
• ​"Joni speaks from a grounded place and pulls from a deep well of centered knowing." — Jackson Wai Chung Tse 謝瑋聰
• "Many films were born out of 2020's global pandemic lockdown, but none are as riveting and gut-wrenching to digest as Joni Renee Whitworth's Lilies—who not only delivers a poetic odyssey with 'both of her hands' but one of the best short films of the year. Whitworth delivers a masterclass in screenwriting and sets herself apart from her wolfpack peers in serving a bunch of epic dialogue lines that are so twisted and yet all the more powerful and transcendental for it ("The end of the world makes me horny", "I've been instructed to breathe" and "We're jobless artists in a nation that hasn't paid for art in years, if ever"). These are the rare sort of quotes that have the power and weight to go down in film history—just like "May the Force be with you" (Star Wars, 1977) and "We're not in Kansas anymore" (The Wizard of Oz, 1939). Joni, copyright these! Whitworth poured her entire existence and being into her canvas without any reservation; sprinkled her soul with experimental flair and imagination; and ultimately made us have a taste of what it feels like to be a queer autistic kid in current society. Lilies leaves us so transfixed to a point of no return. Raw, personal, unique. Exactly the recipe that makes the most successful of films so timeless." — ​Adrian Perez
  

for Self Defense

• "Powerful, angular prose." — Judith Murciano

for Pipe Dream

• “Something I enjoyed was the second performance when they said "If I don’t have an outlet, I'll turn it in on myself" and I think it's very important to have something you love doing! Staying busy and doing healthy things you love helps process your inner feelings so much.” — Emily
• “I have had goosebumps almost this entire time and my eyes have leaked a bit. I have most loved the story of Maggie Jane. They used such pacing and passion as to draw the listener in and feel, see, the story. They took Maggie Jane’s traits that the world would see negatively and expressed them as reasons why she was amazing. We are all messy and we ALL have the right to be safe and loved in our bodies.” — Linda