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Kayo Hatta
Filmmaker (1958-2005)
Born in Hawaii in 1958, Kayo Hatta was an independent filmmaker and director who told stories that would probably not have been told through mainstream filmmakers. She was also a screenwriter, documentarian, and educator. Her film, Picture Bride, told the story of a young woman from Japan who travels to Hawaii as a picture bride in 1918. The film became an Official Selection at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Film at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. One of the first films made in Hawaii, Picture Bride so effectively chronicles a significant piece of Hawaiian, Japanese, and American history that it became a best-selling DVD and has even been adopted as part of the educational curriculum in many local schools and universities in Hawaii. Her later films included Sutra, a dark comedy, and Fishbowl, a dramatic short. Tragically, Kayo Hatta died in July of 2005 in Encinitas, California at the age of 47.
Biography
- Tim Ryan, "'Picture Bride' filmmaker drowns". Honolulu Star-Bulletin, July 25, 2005.
- Tim Ryan, "Independent filmmaker Kayo Hatta shares the pros and cons of making her own film and surviving". Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 25, 1999.
- Profile: Program for Media Artists.
Works
The Fishbowl Project (2004)
Picture Bride (1995)
- Official film site
- Kayo Hatta, "Making Picture Bride: Balancing History and Fiction in Dramatic Film".
- Review: Janet Maslin, "Match Made in Hawaii, in the Hard Days of 1918". New York Times, April 28, 1995. (Free subscription required)
- Don Klein, "Independent Streak". Stanford Magazine, July-August 1997.