Guest Filmmaker Program - 2010

Classroom Visits

(open to primary & secondary students on O'ahu)

Visiting filmmakers will help to enrich classes such as media production, journalism, language arts, foreign language and social studies. These visits will offer the logistical benefit of bringing speakers into classrooms rather than requiring field trips. Students will learn first-hand from successful professionals in the filmmaking/media industry. Teachers will be encouraged to plan activities that will involve students interacting with their guest speakers.

Darieus Legg

Darieus Legg's fascination with cinema began when his father Paul Legg set up the family video recorder to keep him and his brother occupied. Since that day in 1992, a day hasn’t gone by that these two brothers Darieus and Cyrus haven’t imagined some sort of creative narrative. Darieus is from the Big Island of Hawaii and surfed competitively for five years before attended the University of Hawaii where he was denied from film school. With the discovery of Torry Tokuafus inspiring film festival, Showdown In Chinatown, Darieus went on to create and learn from as many short films as he could in his spare time. Legg also spent his free time watching the old masters (Scorsese, Coppolla, Welles) and taking notes on technique. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in marketing he set out to accomplish his life long dream of making a full-length feature film.

ECILA is Darieus' debut feature, and is set to be a trilogy piece. All of Darieus' experience in film came from watching his favorite director's movies, interviews, Robert Campbell, and behind the scenes. Not to mention just doing it.

Chuck Mitsui

Chuck Mitsui has been a pioneer in the Hawaii skateboard scene since 1995 when he opened the first skate shop in the islands, 808 Skate. While continuing to run his shop Chuck began producing commercials and short programs for XL@M TV, an extreme sports network in Hawaii. In 2001 he released his first 30 minute skate video entitled Hi808 and followed it up in 2005 with IT'S 8:08, an hour long documentary which gained much acclaim in the skateboarding world for its vivid cinematography and storytelling narrative. In the spring of 2006 Chuck was accepted to the prestigious Binger Film Lab's Script Development Programme where he completed the first draft of ONE KINE DAY. The following year he retuned to the Netherlands to attend the Binger Film lab's Director's Coaching Programme to sharpen his directing skills and gain a greater understanding of the script as it seen on screen. In the summer of 2009 Chuck began principal photography of ONE KINE DAY and the film was completed in spring of 2010. The 2010 Honolulu International Film Festival premiere will mark his directorial debut.

Miao Wang

Miao Wang is a filmmaker based in New York, currently splitting her time between NY and Beijing. Born and raised in Beijing just after the Cultural Revolution, she grew up with the last remnants of a pre-modernized Communist China. She immigrated to the US in 1990, a year after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Her first half-hour documentary film, YELLOW OX MOUNTAIN (2006), which she directed, produced and edited, is an insightful look at the impact of China’s Cultural Revolution on two Chinese contemporary artists based in New York. It has screened at over 20 film festivals and institutions worldwide, received a Best Short Film Award, broadcast on Thirteen/WNET, and is distributed by Filmmaker's Library.

Miao absorbed inspiration from the legendary Albert Maysles while working as an apprentice at Maysles Films. As an editor, she has edited a feature-length PBS documentary and programs for National Geographic. She also edited numerous video projects collaborating with renowned artists such as Steven Holl, Malcolm McLaren and Miru Kim.

Miao has just completed her first feature-length film, BEIJING TAXI. She captures Beijing from the unique point of view of an emigrant Beijinger carrying the perspectives of both a native and an outsider. Miao has been awarded a grant from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund (2007), the Jerome Foundation (2008), and the New York State Council for the Arts (2009), for BEIJING TAXI. She is a fellow of DocuClub, the IFP Filmmaker's Lab, the IFP Independent Film Week, and Tribeca All Access (a part of the Tribeca Film Institute).

Video Conferences

(open to students statewide, grades 3-12)

The Department of Education Teleschool Branch will help coordinate one-hour video conferences featuring filmmakers who will share clips of their work and interact with students via video monitors. Prior to the conferences, teachers will be asked to collect questions for the speakers from their students. These questions will be forwarded to the speakers to help them prepare for the discussions. The conferences will be open to all public and private schools with compatible video conferencing capabilities. (The conferences may also be taped for inclusion in the video archive that is visible within the DOE network.)

Ric Galindez

Ricardo Galindez attended both undergraduate and law school at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was general counsel to a number of software companies before moving to Hawaii in 2001 to join Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel, Hawai'i's oldest and largest full service law firm. He played a major role as a partner in the Entertainment Law Group, where he honed his corporate structuring and financing skills while representing studio clients such as Twentieth Century Fox, ABC/Touchstone/Disney and Warner Bros. as well as independent filmmakers. Ric has garnered a strong reputation in the area of film financing and is regarded as an expert in Act 221/215 and Act 88 financing for film and television projects in Hawaii. He has also lectured at the University of Hawai'i's Academy of Creative Media on entertainment law. Ric currently serves on the boards of the Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) and the Film and Video Association of Hawaii (FAVAH).

Roy Tijoe

Roy Tjioe has roots in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and he attended Millfield School in Somerset, England, but he has called Hawai'i home since 1980. At the William S. Richardson School of Law, he was Comments Editor for the Law Review, and he received the American Jurisprudence Award for Negotiation and Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Bernard Levinson Memorial Award for outstanding essay on Constitutional Law. Roy was a successful litigation attorney at Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel from 1988 and was a partner from 1996 until his departure in 2007. From 2002, he led Goodsill's Entertainment Law Group, where he represented local, national and international film and television producers, including Twentieth Century Fox, ABC/Touchstone/Disney and Warner Bros. as well as independent filmmakers. He has lectured at the University of Hawai'i's Pacific New Media and the Academy of Creative Media on entertainment law. In addition to his legal background, Roy is an aspiring screenwriter [3rd Place (Drama), American Accolades Screenwriting Competition; quarterfinalist, CineStory Screenwriting Awards], and has acted in numerous local stage and independent film productions (his recent Chinese language film "Dao" won a Special Jury Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival). His artwork has been featured on the covers of the Hawai'i Bar Journal and he also works as a professional storyboard artist.