"I was there (at the School) at a challenging time. There wasn’t anyone there doing the sort of work I was interested in," she says.

"I didn’t know what the distinctions were between television news documentaries and film documentaries."

Now a successful independent filmmaker, Jarmel gets it. She’s earned high praise for her first full-length independent documentary, "The Return of Sarah’s Daughters," (1997) and is in preproduction on a new film, "Standard Operating Procedure," slated for release next year.

"What I do is a cross between journalism and art. I think my work has the kind of integrity good journalism has," she says. "It’s not objectivity but critical thinking."

After graduation, Jarmel moved to San Francisco -- "a vibrant community and the best place in the world to produce independent documentaries," she says -- and spent eight years producing, researching and editing other people’s projects. Her resume includes the Academy Award-nominated "For Better or For Worse;" "Berkeley in the Sixties," which won other awards, and Sundance Film Festival-winner, "Freedom on My Mind."

She drew critical acclaim with "The F Word: A Short Video about Feminism," which screened at the American Film Institute’s Video Fest in Los Angeles; ImageFest in Palo Alto, Calif.; and on San Francisco public television’s "Living Room Festival."

But it took a longtime feminist friend’s marriage into an Orthodox Jewish family to inspire Jarmel’s first full-length independent project, "The Return of Sarah’s Daughters."

"I wondered, 'What happened to (my friend) that made this life that seemed so restrictive -- especially to secular women -- so attractive?’ " she says.

The questions brewed for five years while Jarmel worked on other projects. Eventually her curiosity drove her to work on the project.

"I knew I had to make the film a priority," she says. "I started the project interested in how women perceive their choices, and my interest widened to Judaism as I found myself spending more time in that community."

She interviewed dozens of women involved in Orthodoxy. Then the prejudices fell.

As she explained in an interview for the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, "I found a lot of smart, active women who had found things I was looking for and couldn’t find in the secular world, like a strong community and support for family ... and they lived their lives with an ethical intentionality that I had a lot of respect for."

"The Return of Sarah’s Daughters" follows the journeys -- and the return to Judaism -- of two women.

Rus, a social worker raised in a nonreligious home, discovered a supportive community and sense of belonging in the Lubavitcher (Hasidic) community. There, she established a new network of friends and met her husband.

In the summer of 1997, "The Return of Sarah’s Daughters" began screenings at the 17th Annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and at documentary and film festivals throughout the United States and Canada. The film’s accolades include a Cine Golden Eagle, A Gold Apple at the National Educational Media Awards and first place in the Magnes Museum Jewish Video Competition.

Jarmel appreciates the positive response, but says the work is its own reward.

And she’s thinking of Mica.

"He hasn’t started asking questions yet, but I want Mica to have a more meaningful connection to his community than I had, so that if he decides to join, he can do it with integrity," Jarmel says.

Mica’s birth helped inspire Jarmel’s next project, "Standard Operating Procedure," which has just received funding. In it, Jarmel and her husband, film editor Ken Schneider, plan to explore the impact of a growing obstetrics industry.

"It stems from a concern for public policy and my experience in becoming a mother. Giving birth was a transformational experience," Jarmel says.

"If you think about it, it’s one of the two times -- death being the other one -- when you get to touch creation."

Jarmel asks, "When did the birthing mother transition from the giver of life to a patient in an institution designed to treat disease? What has been gained and lost in the transition?"