Randall Okita

Last updated

Randall Okita is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and visual artist [1] known for creating work that involves rich visual language [2] and innovative approaches to storytelling. [3]

Contents

Career

His 2014 National Film Board of Canada short film The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer won the Best Canadian Short Film award at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. It was named to the festival's year-end Canada's Top Ten list of the year's ten best Canadian shorts. It also won awards for Best Short Film at the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal, Best Experimental Short Film at both the New York Short Film Festival and LA Shorts Fest, and Best Cinematography at the Berlin International Short Film Festival.

Once Right Now Just Then, Okita's 2015 performance, which explored presence, the passing of time, and the nature of grieving and expectation, was presented as part of Sunday Drive Art Projects.

Okita's 2016 feature directorial debut, The Lockpicker received the Discovery Award at the Canadian Screen Awards. The film won the Grand Jury Award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival 2016, Best First Feature at the 2016 Reel Asian Film Festival, and Best Narrative Feature at the 2016 West Virginia International Film Festival.

In 2016, Be Here Now, an interactive multimedia installation made from feathers, wood, wire, and interactive sound and light, was part of an exhibition of artworks at the Robert Kananaj Gallery, and a part of a group exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The Book of Distance is a room-scale virtual reality experience written and directed by Okita. It was an official selection at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, 2020 Venice International Film Festival, and 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. It won the 2020 Festival du Nouveau Cinema’s FNC Explore Prix Horizon, 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival’s Best in Animation - Virtual/Mixed Reality, 2020 Kaohsiung Film Festival’s VR Golden Fireball Award and 2020 Japan Prize’s Best Work in Digital Media Division. His film See for Me premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. [4]

In 2021, Randall directed the IFC film See For Me, which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and the BFI London Festival.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mina Shum</span> Canadian film director

Mina Shum is an independent Canadian filmmaker. She is a writer and director of award-winning feature films, numerous shorts and has created site specific installations and theatre. Her features, Double Happiness and Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity both premiered in the US at the Sundance Film Festival and Double Happiness won the Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival and the Audience Award at Torino. She was director resident at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. She was also a member of an alternative rock band called Playdoh Republic.

Ann Marie Fleming is an independent Canadian filmmaker, writer, and visual artist. She was born in Okinawa, USCAR, in 1962 and is of Chinese, Ryukyuan and Australian descent. Her film Window Horses was released in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival</span>

The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival is a charitable cultural film festival organization located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that advocates Asian representations in media arts. Works include films and videos by artists in Canada, the U.S., Asia and all over the world. As Canada's largest and longest-running Pan-Asian film festival in Canada with a 27-year history, Reel Asian provides a public forum for Asian media artists and their work, and fuels the growing appreciation for Asian cinema in Canada.

Richard Ron Cramer was an American film producer, film director, screenwriter, artist and composer.

<i>Native New Yorker</i> (film) 2005 short film by Steve Bilich

Native New Yorker (2005) is the title of the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival Best Documentary Short by Steve Bilich.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Kwek</span> Singaporean filmmaker (born 1979)

Ken Kwek is a Singaporean screenwriter, director, playwright and author. His short film compendium, Sex.Violence.FamilyValues, was banned by the Singapore and Malaysian governments in 2012. His first feature film Unlucky Plaza premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. His second feature #LookAtMe premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival in 2022, to critical acclaim. He has written several full-length plays, including the #MeToo drama, This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls, which premiered in Singapore in 2019. He is also the author of several best-selling children’s books including Kelly and the Krumps, which won the Hedwig Anuar Book Award in 2020.

The Reel Shorts Film Festival, held annually in Grande Prairie, Alberta since 2007, is recognized as one of North America's best short film festivals. Its programming focus is short-form cinematic storytelling, screening "gems of storytelling brilliance" from around the world, across Canada, and in the Peace Region. The purpose is twofold: to entertain, educate, and engage audiences; and to grow the film-making community in the Peace Region by inspiring, developing, and showcasing its filmmakers. Thousands of submissions are received annually from which 80-105 short films are selected. It is a qualifying festival for the Canadian Screen Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Anderson (artist)</span> Canadian filmmaker and musician

Trevor Anderson is a Canadian filmmaker and musician. His films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.

Heather Young is a Canadian filmmaker based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Ann Shin is a filmmaker and writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Jackson (filmmaker)</span> First Nations filmmaker

Lisa Jackson is a Canadian Screen Award and Genie Award-winning Canadian and Anishinaabe filmmaker. Her films have been broadcast on APTN and Knowledge Network, as well as CBC's ZeD, Canadian Reflections and Newsworld and have screened at festivals including HotDocs, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Melbourne, Worldwide Short Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachelle Henry</span> American actress and filmmaker

Rachelle Henry is an American actress and filmmaker. She played the role of Sandy Hobbs in the TLC series Escaping the Prophet and Lissa Golaski in Depth, the film prequel to the video game Soma, by Frictional Games. She is also known for directing and producing short films with social influence and coming of age themes, including Missing,Defining Moments, and Almost Boyfriends.

<i>The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer</i> 2014 Canadian film

The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer is a 2014 Canadian short film directed by Randall Okita. Mixing live action with animation, the film depicts two brothers whose shared childhood traumas have led them in very different directions as adults: one, the "weatherman", has become a cautious, careful man who tries to protect himself by obsessively predicting the future, while the other, the "shadowboxer", has become an aggressive, violent man who is constantly fighting the past.

Derek Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American filmmaker and playwright best known for his 2016 feature film The Housemaid , which was shot in Vietnam and produced by CJ E&M Film Division, HKFilm, and Timothy Linh Bui.

The Lockpicker is a 2016 Canadian drama film, directed by Randall Okita. The film stars Keigian Umi Tang as Hashi, a troubled teen/petty criminal trying to escape a cycle of violence.

Matthew Puccini is an American filmmaker. He is known for his short films that deal with LGBT-related subject matters. These include The Mess He Made (2017), Marquise (2018), Dirty (2020) and Lavender (2019). His films have played at several festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs ShortsFest, and Outfest Los Angeles. His work has also been featured on Topic and The Huffington Post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rajee Samarasinghe</span> Director and filmmaker

Rajee Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan filmmaker and visual artist. His work explores a wide array of topics including the Sri Lankan Civil War, his family, and the deconstruction of documentary and narrative film.

Elvira Lind is a Danish film director based in New York City.

The Book of Distance is a Canadian virtual reality documentary film, directed by Randall Okita and released in 2020. Made for the National Film Board of Canada, the film is an animated immersive environment placing the viewer inside the context of Okita's grandfather Yonezo Okita's experiences during the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II.

Jason Lapeyre is a Canadian film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his 2012 film I Declare War, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest. I Declare War was released theatrically in the US by Drafthouse Films.

References

  1. ↑ "Q&A with Visual Artist Randall Okita". Skwigly . 2014-09-04. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  2. ↑ "INTERVIEWS - Randall Okita discusses "The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer"" . Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  3. ↑ Canada, Service (2015-10-07). "Reel Asian features two innovative NFB shorts from acclaimed Toronto artists, Randall Okita's The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer and Howie Shia's BAM". gcnws. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  4. ↑ John Fink, "Tribeca Review: See For Me is a Predictable Home Invasion Thriller with a New Twist". The Film Stage, June 16, 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.