Keiko Ibi

Keiko Ibi (* 1967 in Niigata , Japan ) is a Japanese documentary filmmaker , film director and camerawoman who won an Oscar at the 71st Academy Awards in 1999 for her short film The Personals: Improvisations on Romance in the Golden Years .

biography

Keiko Ibi is the only child of her now divorced parents. She took a liking to American films at an early age. She studied literature at the Japanese Women's University Nihon Joshi Daigaku . During this time, the then 19-year-old was elected Miss Japan in 1987. She took acting classes and directed school plays. From 1991 she studied film art at Syracuse University and came one step closer to her goal of mastering the language and culture of her new home even better. In 1993, she moved to New York University , whose graduates include several Academy Award winners . She completed her studies there in 1998 with a Master of Fine Arts.

In 1994 Ibi was involved in Greg Pak's drama short Mr. Lee , in which a Korean-American mother caught her daughter in an African American's bed. She also worked on Pak's short film Mouse behind the camera in 1997 . The film addresses how a young man tries to escape a conversation with his girlfriend about pregnancy by releasing a mouse in his apartment.

She was rewarded with an Oscar for her first own film The Personals: Improvisations on Romance in the Golden Years , and the nomination was a surprise, as it rarely happens that a student's thesis receives one at all. Ibi is the first Japanese woman to win an Oscar.

The comedic film drama Chutney Popcorn about Reena, a young Indian-American lesbian woman whose sister finds that she is sterile herself, was on Ibis's schedule in 1999.

Keiko Ibi is married to the Texas-born director and cameraman Grek Pak.

Filmography (selection)

1994: Mr. Lee (short film; camera department)
1997: Mouse (short film, on camera)
1998: Fighting Grandpa (documentary short film; sound department)
1999: The Personals: Improvisations on Romance in the Golden Years (documentary short film; producer, editor, director)
1999: Chutney Popcorn (camera department)