Film & Media Arts

Miya Turnbull

Miya Turnbull is a Canadian multi-disciplinary visual artist. Primarily a mask maker, she also works in many mediums such as painting, photography, screen printing, textiles, video, animation and projection. She is of settler, mixed Japanese-Canadian ancestry(Yonsei) and grew up on a farm 45km NW of Edmonton, Alberta (Treaty 6 territory). Her mother, Marjene Matsunaga Turnbull, […]

Helen Koyama

Helen Koyama is a Sansei writer based in Toronto. Her poetry was published in the landmark Asian Canadian anthology Inalienable Rice in 1979, and she also did illustrations for Rikka and Ricepaper magazines. She has worked in the Japanese Canadian community in Toronto, including for The New Canadian, which also published her poetry. She currently […]

Tim Tamashiro

Tim Tamashiro is a singer and ‘jazz evangelist’, well-known as the host of Tonic on CBC Radio 2. Growing up in Blackfalds, Alberta, Tamashiro had six months of piano lessons before his mother and piano teacher decided to let him teach himself how to play by ear; he has since become a passionate believer in […]

Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki is the author of the novels My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), and A Tale for the Time-Being (2013). She is also a filmmaker and a Zen Buddhist priest. Her novels have been published in over thirty countries, and translated into 11 languages. Ozeki splits her time between British Columbia […]

Jeff Chiba Stearns

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy® nominated and Webby award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker, as well as an acclaimed author and illustrator. After graduating from the Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation, he founded Vancouver-based boutique animation studio and publishing company Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. in 2001. Jeff’s short and feature length […]

David Suzuki

David Suzuki is a renowned environmental activist, and the author of 52 books, including 19 for children. A geneticist by training, Suzuki has become well-known as a broadcaster and spokesperson for environmental conservation. His autobiography looks at his family’s history in Canada, including their experience in Slocan internment camp during the 1940s, when Suzuki was […]

Tomiyo Sasaki

Tomiyo Sasaki is a pioneer of experimental video art from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Born in British Columbia, she began her art training in Canada, and continued in the United States, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Arts in Sculpture from the […]

Yoichi Shimizu

Yoichi Shimizu is a Japanese-born graphic designer who worked primarily in Toronto. After graduating from Naniwa Art College in Osaka, Shimizu worked for a Japanese design company, Nippon Create Design Limited, for from 1974-1976. He then immigrated to Canada and worked for Gottschalk and Ash Limited in Montreal, later moving on to different design companies […]

Yukari Ochiai

Yukari Ochiai is a Montreal-based painter and graphic artist who exhibits extensively around the world. Born in Yokohama, Japan, she attended a School of Fine Arts, ‘Joshi Bijutsu’, in Tokyo, receiving her diploma in 1960. After exhibiting as an artist in Tokyo and teaching fine arts at a girls’ high school, Ochiai travelled to Russia […]

Gordon Hashimoto

Gordon Hashimoto is a Montreal-based editor, filmmaker and musician. As a student at Concordia University, he variously produced, wrote, directed, and edited a number of experimental short films; as a professional in the filmmaking industry, he works primarily as a picture editor or assistant editor, on such productions as Rene Levesque, Fries with That, and […]

Brenda Kamino

Brenda Kamino is an actress who has performed on many of Canada’s best known stages for 40 years creating many roles in new plays for Cahoots Theatre Projects, Theatre Passe Muraille, Factory Theatre, YPT, Alberta Theatre Projects, the Prairie Theatre Exchange, fu-Gen Theatre, Nightwood Theatre; Kamino has also spent a season at the Shaw Festival […]

Ruby Truly

Ruby Truly is a Hawaii-born Nikkei actor and filmmaker. Born in Maui, she grew up dancing the hula, which she credits as a lifelong artistic influence. She studied theatre at the University of Hawaii, and immigrated to Canada in the 1960s. As a performer, she has numerous film, television, and theatre credits, including The War […]

Roy Onami

Roy Onami is a retired graphic designer and painter. Born in Vancouver, Onami, his mother, and siblings were forcibly removed from the coast in 1942 and sent to live in Sandon internment camp. Their family resettled in Montreal after the war, where Onami graduated from high school and got a job with Trans Canada Airlines […]

Denis Akiyama

Denis Akiyama is an actor and voice actor with extensive credits in theatre, film, and television. Born and raised in Toronto, Akiyama received a BA in Psychology from York University and began working in child care before deciding to pursue his dream of acting. He studied at George Brown College, and began a decades-long career […]

Kenji Nagai

Kenji Nagai is a freelance photographer based in Vancouver. Born in Japan, he worked for photography studios in Osaka and Kobe before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s. He has had his own company, Kenji Photo Design, since 1983.