Kimi Takesue

Artist, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Filmmaker, Producer, World traveler

Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, experimental and narrative genres. She is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Rockefeller Fellowship in Media Arts. In 2018, she received a highly-competitive national “Breakthrough Award” and fellowship from Chicken and Egg Pictures for her contributions to the documentary field. Other honors include two fellowships from NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), a Kodak Cinematography Fellowship, and grants from Catapult, ITVS, NYSCA, and the Arts Council of England. She is an eight-time fellow at Yaddo, Bogliasco, and the MacDowell Colony. Takesue’s ten films have screened at more than three hundred festivals/museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, New Directors/New Films, SXSW, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Museum of Modern Art-NYC and have aired on PBS, IFC, Comcast, and the Sundance Channel. Her recent documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO (2016), a portrait of her Japanese-American grandfather in Hawai’i was nominated for the prestigious 2017 European Doc Alliance Award. The film explores how a resilient senior unexpectedly collaborates with his granddaughter on her stalled romantic screenplay, inspiring him to reflect on his life of love, loss and perseverance. 95 AND 6 TO GO screened at over twenty-five international festivals including CPH:DOX, Dok Leipzig, BAFICI, Krakow, and DOC NYC. The film won Special Jury Prizes for Best Documentary at Indie Memphis and the Los Angeles Asian International Film Festival. Takesue has made observational documentaries in Vietnam, Uganda and Peru that delve into the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounters. Her fiction films often explore unlikely friendships between people from different worlds. In THAT WHICH ONCE WAS (2011) two environmental refugees connect when a young boy displaced by a hurricane develops an unexpected bond with an Inuk ice carver, who helps him confront his past. Current projects include: TOUR GUIDE which explores the legacy of the Cambodian genocide through the eyes of local tour guides as they lead foreigners to the Killing Fields and other “dark tourism” sites. The film observes young guides who straddle the past and present as they recount and perform the narrative of Cambodian genocide. THE INDECISIVE MOMENT- a stylized observational documentary that delves into the pleasures, strains, and uncertainties of backpacker tourism through Laos and asks the fundamental question: what are people seeking when they travel abroad? EXCHANGE: A video installation and series of video portraits of Laotian women and men working in the tourist industry. The piece raises questions about cross-cultural representation, power, and portraiture. Takesue has been a selection committee member for MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight and served as a juror for DOC NYC and BAFICI-Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. She has been a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Takesue is an Associate Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.

Creative and lyrical documentary/fiction filmmaking. Diversity and inclusion in the filmmaking space in terms of race, gender, and artistic sensibility. I’m interested in utilizing a poetic cinematic language to make films that have social and artistic impact, while also being formally innovative and accessible to diverse audiences. I strive for a contemplative form of cinema that allows the viewer the time and freedom to engage with images, watch events unfold, and begin to see and appreciate commonplace situations in a new way.

In a distracted digital age of increasing sensationalism and instant gratification, we need intimate, unique films that cultivate patience, reflection and the challenges of seeing anew. Alternative approaches in film are essential in order to inspire different forms of empathy, social engagement, beauty, and pleasure.

Creative documentary, Visually driven narrative film

I'm excited to connect with new folks that I would not normally meet. I relish the opportunity to meet people across disciplines and engage in stimulating conversations beyond my field.

Taking multiple baths within a day; malasana-yoga squatting; finding a good deal--that's how I make my films!