DAWN MIKKELSON

Dawn Mikkelson (Co-Director, Co-Producer, and Second Camera) is a 2018 and 2015 Emmy Award winning producer, and 2010 McKnight Filmmaking Fellow whose work has broadcast and screened internationally at festivals around the world. She is also the Broadcast Content Manager for WDSE•WRPT (PBS, Duluth) and frequent contributor for Twin Cities PBS (TPT). Ms. Mikkelson has completed five award-winning independent feature documentaries, The Red Tail, Green Green Water, THIS obedience, and Treading Water: a documentary, all of which illuminate larger societal issues while creating understanding through the intimate stories of individuals. Her fifth feature documentary, Risking Light, premiered in Competition at the 2018 Cinequest Film Festival, listed by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Mercury Sun as one of the Top 10 films of Cinequest. Risking Light has received strong reviews across the United States and Australia, has screened at festivals worldwide, and will be available to the general public on iTunes in August 2019.

KERI PICKETT

Keri Pickett (Co-Director, Director of Photography) is an award-winning artist, producer, director, cinematographer, and a 2017 McKnight Foundation Fellow in Media Arts. Ms. Pickett’s documentary films First Daughter and the Black Snake and The Fabulous Ice Age have won multiple awards and screened at festivals around the world, breaking records in attendance with First Daughter and the Black Snake. The Fabulous Ice Age was a Netflix Original,  translated into 10 languages. A well known photographer , Ms. Pickett’s career began in 1983 under legendary NYC Village Voice Director of Photography, Fred McDarrah. She has since published multiple photography books, her photographs are displayed in international and national museums and have appeared in Life, Time, People, Stern, and Geo magazines, and she has been awarded fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight, Jerome, and Target Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

JENNIFER WEIR

Jennifer Weir (Executive and Co-Producer) has been passionately studying, performing, teaching, and composing Taiko for the past two decades. Ms. Weir is the founding Executive Director of TaikoArts Midwest, Artistic Director of Ensō Daiko (formerly Mu Daiko), and a performing member of ensemble-MA, led by Iris Shiraishi. Ms. Weir is also a theater director and dramaturg with Theater Mu, and a past recipient of grants from Live Music for Dance MN, MN State Arts Board, MN Regional Arts Board, Arts International, American Composers Forum, and a Jerome MN Travel Grant. By day, Ms. Weir is a Financial Analyst and uses her business acumen to manage and keep her artistic projects on budget.

SHIHO FUKADA

Shiho Fukada (second camera) is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, cinematographer , and photojournalist based in Tokyo. She started her career as a news photographer in New York and has a decade of experience shooting and producing stories nationally and internationally. She currently pursues underreported stories both in video and photography.

She has a degree in English literature from Sophia University in Japan and received a diploma in Multimedia Journalism from Ateno de Manila University in the Philippines. 

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Time, Stern, New Yorker, Le Monde, CNN, and MSNBC, among others.

caroline mariko stucky

Caroline Mariko Stucky (Camera Operator) is an award-winning Swiss-Japanese independent filmmaker with a fierce passion for American culture. For Caroline, film, the world of the image, is the ultimate language that trumps the whirling kaleidoscope of spoken languages of her childhood. Her work includes fiction, documentary, commercial, live performance videos, and music videos. With an unusually technical background, Stucky is active as both a cinematographer and director. She has been a member of the International Collective of Female Cinematographers since 2018.

HEIDI CHAN

Heidi Chan (Original Score) is a composer and musician based in Toronto, Canada. Ms. Chan began playing Taiko in 2000 with Toronto’s Isshin Daiko, and later became a member of professional ensemble Nagata Shachu (2002-2007, 2012-2014), with whom she performed, composed, and taught across Canada, the US, and Italy. Ms. Chan performed with Hong Kong’s first and all-female Taiko group, O•Daiko (2010-2012), directing their first full-length concert in 2011. Currently, Ms. Chan is a freelance Taiko and shinobue artist and performer, and a member of the Toronto-based Japanese folk ensemble Ten Ten (led by shamisen player and vocalist Aki Takahashi). Ms. Chan performs solo electronic ambient music as Bachelard, combining flute and percussion with live looping techniques and modular synthesizers. Currently a Ph.D candidate in Ethnomusicology at York University, Ms. Chan produces music and sound design for theatre and dance performances. Credits include Titus Andronicus and Macbeth (Tang Shu-Wing Studio, Hong Kong), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare’s Globe, UK), Bitter Tea and Wind/Breeze (Little Pear Garden Collective, Toronto), Wing Night at the Boot (Blyth Theatre Festival, Canada), and the upcoming Iphigenia Among The Taurians(Saga Collectif, Toronto).