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' O l e n a M e d i a _StephJCastillo

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Home of Stephanie J. Castillo, EMMY Winner Independent Filmmaker, web designer, writer Welcome! I hope you will browse around to see what I am up to and how my 30 years in this business of Media Production has been productive, fun and amazing. Thanks for stopping by!!

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ANNOUNCING . . .

I'll be teaching Digital Storytelling starting

January 12, 2012 at Kauai Community College!!!

Read the Press Release, click here.

About Me

About Me

A former journalist and an EMMY Award-winning independent filmmaker, Stephanie has been developing television documentaries since 1989. She holds an Executive MBA (2000) from the University of Hawaii. Her many awards include an Emmy Award, 3 CINE Golden Eagles, a Tele Award, two Best awards at the Hawaii International FIlm Festival, a Progress Award from the Hawaii United Filipino Council, and a Pamana Arts Legacy Award in recognition of her contribution to the Filipino American community through the documentary AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH.

Her company 'Olena Media is based in Hawaii and has producing partners in Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. She also produces marketing, educational, nonprofit and promotional videos.

My Biography
A former Hawaii newspaper journalist and an EMMY Award-winning independent filmmaker, Stephanie has been developing television documentaries full-time since 1989. Her other film awards are many. She holds an MBA (2000) from the University of Hawaii and was a 1999 Selected Professions Fellow with the American Association of University Women. She also received Career Development Grants from the AAUW in both her undergrad and graduate years.Her Hawaii-based production company, 'Olena Media, completed its first documentary SIMPLE COURAGE in 1992 as a co-production with Hawaii Public Television. The documentary examined the history behind Hawaii's tragic leprosy epidemic and the compassionate intervention of Belgium missionary priest Father Damien. It won a Regional EMMY in 1993 as well as many other national awards that year, including a CINE Golden Eagle, a Gold Award at Worldfest Houston, a Silver Award at the Chicago Intl Film Festival, Best Hawaii Film at the Hawaii International Film Festival, and an Honorable Mention from the National Education Association. RECENT WORK: Stephanie continues as a consultant to Kauai Girl Productions as an associate producer/writer/editor. Her recent independent work on a family reunion video and videos for her church as ministry continues to keep her involved in personal documentaries.In February 2011, Stephanie was retained to work on a personal history project that took her to Thailand and Burma for research. In October 2010, Stephanie began work on creating flash websites for clients on the island of Kauai, Hawaii where she now lives.She also serves as production consultant on a new documentary from Native Hawaiian filmmaker Meleanna Aluli Meyer. When completed, KU'U 'AINA ALOHA: MY BELOVED COUNTRY will tell the story of the overthrow and annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the United States and its aftermath from the point of view and perspective of Native Hawaiians. PAST WORK: In November 2009, PBS Hawaii hosted the broadcast premiere of her ninth documentary, STRANGE LAND. The hour-long documentary told the story of her mother, Norma Vega Castillo, a WWII war bride who left her Philippines to come to America with her soldier husband from Hawaii.In May 2009, she completed two years as a communications consultant for Consuelo Foundation, a Hawaii-based operating foundation, a nonprofit doing work among poor children, women and families in the Philippines and Hawaii. She wrote two annual reports for the Foundation and helped plan a third. She revamped the foundation's website and gave it a fresh look and approach. Most recently, she produced for the Foundation a 40-minute high-definition video that celebrated the Foundation's benefactress and 20 years of giving hope by some 120 Philippine partners working on the front lines of poverty and abuse.In 2004, she co-produced a cable television series called Hawaii's Reel Stories. Still on the air today, it features the works of local filmmakers and focuses on the Hawaii filmmaking community at-large.In 2005, she completed REMEMBER THE BOYS, a short film and tribute to Domingo Los Banos, a Veterans of Foreign Wars chaplain and WWII war buddy to the men he served with as a teenager. Stephanie has completed many award-winning documentaries since beginning her documentary film work in 1989. Among her documentary projects was a 30-min. documentary, OPERA! , which explored the opera-lovers passion. It was produced in 1993 for Hawaii Public Television and was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle that year. Starting in in 2005, An Untold Triumph: The Story of the 1st & 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments, U.S. Army aired on national PBS prime time for four years. She and three fellow filmmakers of Filipino American ancestry completed the one-hour documentary, narrated by actor Lou Diamond Phillips. in 2002. All of the filmmakers had personal ties to the story; Stephanie, who was the lead writer and associate producer, discovered after she signed on to the project in 1994 that this was her fathers regiment and her mother was brought to America by him as his war bride. The 85-minute version had its world premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival on Nov.4, 2002 and won the BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO Audience Award for Best Documentary. It was shown at the Smithsonian Institute on Jan. 30, 2003 and is showing across the country in many Filipino American communities. It also has been shown at Asian American film festivals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York , San Diego, Chicago and Dallas. In 2003, it won a Silver TELLY for video production excellence. In 2003, Stephanie completed the documentary An Uncommon Kindness: The Story of Father Damien, co-produced in Los Angeles with feature film producers Blue Rider Pictures. It was conceived by her, and is the film's its co-director and co-writer. Actor Robin Williams narrates the piece. It was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle that year.The other completed project in 2003 was COCKFIGHTERS: THE INTERVIEWS, an 8-hour DVD/VHS series. The controversial project explores the subculture of cockfighting from the point of view of American cockfighters. A two-hour film festival version, which includes a 12-minute short film, had its world premiere at the Cinema Paradise Film Festival in Honolulu on Sept. 21, 2003 . Also in 2003, Stephanie received two community awards for her work on AN UNTOLD TRIUMPH -- a 2003 Pamana Arts Legacy Award presented to her by the Filipino Arts Exposition in San Francisco and a 2002 Progress Award presented by the United Filipino Council of Hawaii.Stephanie continues to seek production funding for TREASURED ABOVE GOLD, a project conceived in 1994. It will tell the remarkable story of the historic connections between Korea and Japans ceramics through the story of abducted Korean potters and Korean teabowls used in Japanese tea ceremony. Revised in August 2011

Find excerpts of my work on youtube.com

Contact

castillosj_aol.com

I'd love to hear from you! Please email me.

808.383.7393

TV Interviews

STRANGE LAND

COCKFIGHTERS

REMEMBER THE BOYS

TV INTERVIEWS WITH STEPHANIE

Several of my documentaries were featured on Hawaii Reel Stories, a television program about filmmaking in Hawaii. These interviews gave me the opporunity to reflect on the making of my films.

Web Design

Samples

www.epichairboutiquekauai.com

www.KKOAfoundation.org

www.consuelo.org

Other Services

Speaker and Lecturer

Blog sample

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Welcome to my Facebook page

How to Watch Movies

Film Course on the Passion

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Community college lecturer

Speaker & Lecturer

Blogger

More . . .

Here are some other services/creations Stephanie has provided.

Generating youtube content

Movie Specialist

Film Lectures

At Work Photos

My first shoot Molokai 1990

1991 alaupapa Molokai filming

1993 EMMY

2002 Untold Triumph Premiere

2006 Iolani Palace shoot

2007 Port Solent UK shoot

2008 Manila Philippines

2010 Anniversary shoot

2011 Shoot in Thailand - Burma

2011 Recent editing job

2011 Hawaii Intl Film Fest

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Press Release

Press Release 12/12/11 EMMY winner to teach Digital Storytelling at Kauai Community College this Spring
(Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii) - Emmy Award winning filmmaker Stephanie J. Castillo, formerly of Honolulu and now a resident of Kauai, is slated to teach Digital Storytelling at Kauai Community College. Castillo has taught workshops and seminars on film, but this is her first time to teach introductory filmmaking to college students. "I am excited to give back. I attended KCC in 1980 before moving on to attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, and now I am coming full circle." She graduated from the UH with a Bachelors degree in Journalism/English in 1984, and in 2000 with an Executive MBA. Her film education began in 1976 in California while attending Pasadena City College in Los Angeles and in 1979 while attending Humboldt State University in northern California. In 1980, she moved back to Kauai to help care for her ailing father. "It was great to be able to attend KCC that year and be near family." She would later return to Kauai to do summer internships at the Garden Island newspaper while studying journalism at UH Manoa.After graduating from the UH, she went on to work as a journalist with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin for five years. Three years were spent running the Maui News Bureau and her remaining two years with the Bulletin were spent in Honolulu on the Health and Environmental beats. She also did two brief stints with USA Today, including a six-country, six-week reporting tour in Asia. One of her infamous assignments a front-page story on she was able to find Caroline Kennedy on her Maui honeymoon; that story and accompanying photo went worldwide. "My years at the Bulletin were priceless; they were great in preparing me to make documentary films. I saw my stories as mini-scripts. Honing my writing skills would finally lead me to my goal of becoming a documentary filmmaker." Castillo left the paper in 1989 and began working on her first documentary film with Hawaii Public Television. Five years later and with $500,000 that she personally raised in Hawaii, Castillo completed Simple Courage, a one-hour historical documentary about Hawaiis leprosy epidemic and Father Damien's intervention. It aired on PBS across the country and won her an EMMY in 1993.She went on to work on 8 more documentaries, four of them for airing on PBS. In partnership with a filmmaker friend who she had known from high school, Castillo co-wrote and helped produce An Untold Triumph, which was shown nationally on PBS for four years in prime time on Memorial Day. This award-winning 80-minute film sounded the triumphs of Filipino Americans in WWII, among them her father Wallace Castillo of Kapaa, Kauai. One of her other films that showed on PBS was Strange Land, her mother's story of coming to America from the Philippines as a WWII war bride. "I am grateful for the successes in my career as a documentary filmmaker; I haven't gotten rich and I guess I'm a little famous now, but best of all has been living my passion for telling important stories and telling them well," she saysCastillo's KCC 16-week course, Art 157: Digital Filmmaking, starts Jan. 10, 2010.Castillo can be contacted at castillosj_aol.com.

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