Writer/Director/Producer
A former
Hawaii
newspaper journalist and an EMMY Award-winning independent filmmaker,
Stephanie has been developing television documentaries full-time since 1989.
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 Honolulu-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, and an Honorable
Mention from the National Education Association.
RECENT
WORK:
Stephanie
continues as a 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.
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.
PAST WORK:
In
May 2008, 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
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-lover’s 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 father’s 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.
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.
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 Japan’s ceramics through the story of abducted Korean potters and Korean
teabowls used in Japanese tea ceremony.
Revised in May 2010
Personal Background
Stephanie grew up with seven sisters in an Army family and lived six
years in
Japan
, four years in the
Philippines
and the other years in
Hawaii
and the
U.S.
mainland. Her media career
began in high school at the
American
School
in the
Philippines
(1963 – 1967) where she produced band concerts, wrote for a teen
magazine, co-produced a talent show pilot for television, and played rock ‘n
roll as a weekend radio disc jockey. After
graduating and returning with her family to the U.S., she went on to get trained
in radio and landed her first jobs in radio at KGU in Honolulu (1968 –1969)
and KFWB All-News-Radio (1969 – 1971) in Hollywood.
After that, she worked from 1972 to 1976 as a sound producer and
scriptwriter for a multi-media productions company in
Los Angeles
.
In 1979, she began a six-year educational journey, studying film in
California
and finishing up with a BA in journalism/English from the
University
of
Hawaii
. For the five years (1984
– 1989) that followed, she worked as a newspaper journalist for the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin; she was the Maui Bureau Chief for three years and spent the last
two years in
Honolulu
covering health and the environment and doing two brief stints with USA
Today. In 1989, she left the paper
to make her first film, SIMPLE COURAGE.