Kimi Takesue

Kimi Takesue is Professor in the Video Program and an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, narrative, and experimental genres. Many of her films explore the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and representations.

Takesue is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Other honors include a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship, two artist fellowships from the New York Foundation in the Arts, a Kodak Cinematography Fellowship, and grants from ITVS, Ford Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Center for Asian American Media, and The Arts Council of England. She is a six-time artist fellow at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

Her recent feature-length documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO (2016) was nominated for the prestigious 2017 European Doc Alliance Award. The film screened at over twenty-five international film festivals including Doclisboa (Portugal), DOC NYC, CPH:DOX (Denmark); Dok Leipzig (Germany), FID:Marseille (France), BAFICI-Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (Argentina), Krakow International Film Festival (Poland), and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival where the film was awarded a Special Jury Prize for Best Feature Documentary.

Takesue’s critically acclaimed Ugandan documentary WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? was commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam and premiered at the festival, followed by screenings at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, the Los Angles Film Festival, and festivals in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Uganda, Poland, Portugal and India, among others. Where Are You Taking Me? was theatrically released by Icarus Films, was a Critics’ Pick by Time Out-New York and LA Weekly and was described by The New York Times as, “Fascinating…an unusual, visually rich visit to the nation.”

Previous films have screened at scores of film festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, New Directors/New Films, London’s ICA, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Modern Art; and have aired on PBS, IFC, Comcast, and the Sundance Channel.

Takesue has produced television programming for the A&E Network and PBS including The First 48. She has served as a nominator for the Rockefeller Fellowship, panelist for NYFA, international juror for BAFICI-Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, and selection committee member for MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight.

Raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue received a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.F.A. from Temple University. Before coming to Rutgers Newark, Takesue was Assistant Professor at Syracuse University. Her films are distributed by Women Make Movies and Icarus Films.

Kimi Takesue’s website is at www.kimitakesue.com