Ann Kaneko is an Emmy Award winner, known for her personal films that weave her intimate aesthetic with the complex intricacies of political reality.
Her poetic feature, MANZANAR, DIVERTED: WHEN WATER BECOMES DUST, premiered at the 2021 Big Sky Film Festival and won honorable mentions at CAAMFest and Milwaukee Film festivals. She is developing LAND, LABOR AND LOGISTICS through an 18SAC California Creative Corps Fellowship and 45/45 about multi-generational families. She has screened internationally and been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Endowment and the Skirball Cultural Center.
Other films include A FLICKER IN ETERNITY, based on Stanley Hayami’s diary; AGAINST THE GRAIN: AN ARTIST’S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO PERU, highlighting Peruvian political artists; OVERSTAY, about Japanese undocumented workers, and 100% HUMAN HAIR, a musical for the AFI Directing Workshop for Women.
Fluent in Japanese and Spanish, Kaneko has been a Fulbright, Japan Foundation Artist and Film Independent Doc Lab fellow and funded by JustFilms/Ford, the Redford Center, CAAM, Vision Maker Media, Firelight Media and Hoso Bunka Foundation.
She is a member of BGDM, A-Doc and New Day Films, a distribution coop. She teaches at Pitzer College and was the artist mentor for Visual Communication’s Armed with a Camera Fellowship.
