CREATIVE TEAM
CREATIVE TEAM
Kimi Takesue
Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Editor
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, experimental and narrative genres. Takesue’s films have screened at more than 250 film festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, Toronto, New Directors/New Films, SXSW, and MoMA and have aired on PBS, IFC, and the Sundance Channel. Takesue is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Breakthrough Award” from Chicken and Egg Pictures recognizing women who have made significant contributions to the documentary field.
Takesue’s feature documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO, a portrait of her Japanese American grandfather in Hawai’i, was nominated for the 2017 European Doc Alliance Award and screened at over twenty-five international film festivals, including CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, DOC NYC, and Dok Leipzig. The film won the Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary Film at Indie Memphis and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival. Takesue’s critically acclaimed Ugandan feature documentary WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? was commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam and premiered at the festival, followed by screenings at MoMA Documentary Fortnight and the Los Angeles Film Festival where it was a Critics’ Pick by Time Out-New York and LA Weekly. Takesue’s films have received positive reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Variety, Bomb Magazine, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others.
Film honors include Spirit of Slamdance Award, Slamdance Film Festival; Best Short Documentary,Philadelphia Fest. of World Cinema; ITVS FuturestatesAudience Award;Grand Jury Prize,Brooklyn International Film Festival; Gold Medal & Grand Jury Prize, Brno International Film Festival, Czech Republic; Jurors’ Choice Award(1st place), Black Maria Film and Video Festival; Best Narrative Short,San DiegoAsian Film Festival; and Golden Reel:New Visions Award,Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival.
Takesue’s films are distributed by Women Make Movies, New Day Films, and the Criterion Channel. Takesue is Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.
Richard Beenen
Co-Producer
Richard Beenen is a visual artist and photographer whose final art and video have been exhibited at MoMA, Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Roma, White Columns (NYC), Los Angeles Museum of Art, Viper-Basel, Courtisane Festival, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Richard has co-produced numerous award-winning documentaries and short fiction films that have screened at film festival and museums internationally including Sundance, Toronto, Locarno, BAFICI, SXSW, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX , and MoMA. Richard has received artist fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Pollack Krasner Foundation.
Sophie Luo
Co-Producer
Sophie Luo is a producer and filmmaker. She has produced numerous commercial campaigns, digital shorts and films including the Grammys campaign for GAP featuring SZA, Metro Boomin, and Awakafina; a Justice Democrats short featuring Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the award-winning documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO by Kimi Takesue. Her additional clients include Nike, TED, Facebook, Clinique, NYU, and the National Institute of Reproductive Health. Her short film CLOSING ANNISA won the Golden Reel Award for Best Documentary Short at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and screened at the Athena Film Festival, Anchorage International Film Festival, Omaha Film Festival and Seattle Asian American Film Festival. She was recently selected for Women in Film’s inaugural Emerging Producers Program.
Alex Su
Marketing and Distribution Assistant
Alex Su is a recent graduate from the Rutgers University - Newark Business School and School of Arts, Culture, and Media. With a minor in Video Production, he has taken classes with Professor Kimi Takesue and is very enthusiastic in pushing narratives that embrace positive representation. His first short film, “Tabwoods”, produced at Rutgers Newark as well as under the advisement of Kimi Takesue was selected as one of the screening films at the Newark International Film Festival.
Aderet Fishbane
Marketing and Distribution Assistant
Aderet Fishbane is a Film/Media and Religion student at Mount Holyoke College. They study and create works of experimental documentary and video art, and are especially interested in exploiting dynamics between the archive and the present to tell layered stories about everyday identity and experience.