Kathryn Xian

Award winning producer/director Kathryn Xian studied film at New York University and Bard College. She was one of the original drafters and organizers of the Multi-Ethnic Studies Program (MES) implemented in 1993 at Bard College. Xian was also awarded the 2005 Ellison S. Onizuka Human and Civil Rights Award by the National Education Association on July 2nd 2005 and will receive the Soroptimists of Hawaii’s Making a Difference for Women Award on October 20th 2005.

Intent upon encouraging the growth of independent filmmaking in her home state of Hawaii, she co-founded Zang Pictures, Inc.; the only local filmmaking collective which offers education in both digital video and 16mm film production to university interns and the public. “The Problem with Being,” her first of three feature length films, had been adapted from a stage play she had written in 1998 under the tutelage of renowned novelist Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Excerpts from the stage play can be found in the Asian-American anthology entitled “Take Out” published by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City.

She is the First Place winner and Audience Award winner in the short documentary category for her video entitled “Constructions” at the First Annual Short Movie Awards 2000, sponsored by PlanetOut and Ifilm. “Constructions,” a film about female identity and suicide, has also gone on to win a place among the best short films of 2001 Movie Awards of Girlfriends Magazine, the Adam Baran Award for Best Short Film, and local PBS and international internet broadcast. “Constructions” is distributed by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association. Kathryn is also the Producer/Director of critically acclaimed documentary “Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place” which premiered nationally at the Smithsonian Institute on October 19th 2001 as a part of the D.C. Asian Pacific American Film Festival. This documentary (recipient of the 2002 Frameline/Horizons Film and Video Completion Award) is currently touring film Festivals from Australia to Berlin and was aired by WNET in New York (PBS) in June 2003.

Xian is also responsible for fostering new, and reinforcing existing, alliances between the Asian Pacific Islander, Pacific Islander and Native American communities and organizations through the networking needed to conduct educational panels and screenings regarding “Ke Kulana He Mahu.” Organizations which have benefited include: the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum, the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center, the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, U.T.O.P.I.A, the AFSC (Hawaii) and the National Native American Aids Association. Several newspapers, magazines and filmmakers have written about Zang Pictures’ films including Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, Variety Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, AsianWeek, the Honolulu Advertiser, the Honolulu Weekly, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, and director Darren Aronofsky of “Requiem for a Dream.”

In 2002 Kathryn co-founded the Cinema Paradise~ Independent Film Festival in Honolulu which screened the U.S. premiere of the acclaimed international film 11’09’01. She also, along with the University of Hawaii’s Women’s Studies Program, coordinated the Hawaii premiere of the Emmy award-winning film The Selling of Innocents in December of 2002, along with a panel presented by Kelly Hill of Sisters Offering Support, to raise local awareness of the trafficking of women and children for sex to and from Honolulu.

Xian is also the founder of the Hawaii non-profit 501(c)3 The Safe Zone Foundation, an organization founded to produce educational multimedia projects. She is the non-executive director of Girl Fest Hawaii, an annual multimedia festival and conference in Honolulu whose mission it is to prevent violence against women and girls through education and art. She is currently working to establish a Girl Fest Bay Area chapter in 2006 in conjunction with Youth Speaks, Dream, and the Institute for the Study of Social Change.

She co-founded the Rape-Free Zone Coalition on April 4th 2005, which was responsible for enacting change at the University of Hawaii on August 29th 2005 to declare its system (10 Campuses) Rape-Free Zones and requiring all managerial and executive staff to attend an anti-sexism leadership training at Girl Fest led by Jackson Katz, former member of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military and founder of MVP Strategies; an unprecedented event in the University’s history.

Her newly released film Hawaii Slam: Poetry in Paradise will premiere on October 26th 2005 at the 25th Anniversary of the Hawaii International Film Festival. This film reveals the racial stereotypes which four Hawaii slam poets must dispel to stake their claim at the National Poetry Slam in 2004—the first time Hawaii was represented at this competition.

Thaddeus Oliver

Originally from Washington D.C., Oliver currently teaches world politics at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, where he is writing a dissertation on intersections between governance and visual culture. Oliver provided historical research for the documentary film Paniolo O Hawaii- Cowboys of the Far West. He coordinated and executed still photography on location during production, assisted producers with pre-production administrative support and assisted with local political media campaigns, grant seeking, and public relations. Oliver holds an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii, B.A. in International Studies from Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University with a concentration in International Business. He is also a 1999 Award Recipient for the Pacific Asian Scholarship for research concerning the Pacific and Southeast Asia and is co-founder of The East-West Foundation, Inc., Honolulu; an organized 501c3 educational foundation providing grant seeking services for educational multi-media projects.

Jaymee Carvajal

Producer and co-founder of Zang Pictures, Inc., Jaymee Carvajal, has worked in several capacities as writer, director, camera operator, editor, and web editor. She has been working in the film and video industry in Hawaii for five years employing her talents on such short films as the award winning documentary constructions and on feature length films including Paper Cranes, The Problem with Being, and Ke Kulana He Mahu. Carvajal was also the Executive Producer for UH Magazine, a 30 minute variety show, broadcasted on Public Access Television, from 1998-2001. Her multimedia background includes web design using Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, PHP, and HTML. Carvajal also prepares video compression for the internet, as well as distribution to CD-ROM. She also is webmaster for several websites: www.etcetero.com, www.audiomediastudiox.com.

Connie Florez

Former Executive Director for the Honolulu Gay & Lesbian Cultural Foundation, Florez provided her business administrative skills for supporting multimedia artists both in Hawaii and abroad. She is also Festival Co-Programmer of the Adam Baran Honolulu Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.