Kayo Hatta

Filmmaker, writer, and activist

• Born: March 18, 1958
• Place of Birth: Honolulu, Hawaii
• Died: July 20, 2005
• Place of Death: Encinitas, California

Kayo Hatta made an important contribution to the history of Japanese Americans with her independent films Picture Bride and Fishbowl. She also played a significant role in opening the field of filmmaking to women directors.

Areas of achievement: Film, activism

Early Life

Lori Kayo Hatta was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 18, 1958. Her mother, Jane Matano Hatta, was born in Tokyo, Japan. Hatta had three sisters and three half sisters and spent her early childhood in Hawaii. When she was six years old, her family moved to New York City. She later attended Stanford University, where she completed a BA in English in 1981. Then she studied at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and in 1991 she received an MFA degree in film.

While a student at UCLA, Hatta directed several short films, including Otemba (Tomboy, 1988), a film about a young girl whose father wants a son instead of a daughter. She began developing the idea for what would be her most important film, Picture Bride (1995), when she was preparing her thesis project; however, she soon realized that the theme could not be adequately treated in a short thesis-project film and reserved the making of the film for the future.

Life’s Work

After completing her MFA degree, Hatta set about making the full-length film Picture Bride with the help of her sister Mari, who cowrote the screenplay. Hatta shot her entire film on location in Oahu, Hawaii, financing it with grants and local fund-raising. For a $5 donation, donors received mention in the film credits; Hatta received so much support that the credits ran for eleven minutes. The film depicts the problems and disappointments encountered by a young Japanese woman coming to Hawaii for a prearranged marriage in the early 1900s. Much of its dialogue is Hawaiian pidgin English, thus authentically presenting an important aspect of Hawaii-based Japanese American cultural history. The film has become part of the curriculum in many public schools and universities in Hawaii. Picture Bride was an Official Selection at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1994, and in 1995, it won the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Film at the Sundance Film Festival.

As a result of the film’s extremely successful reception at the festival, Picture Bride was purchased by Miramax, a major motion-picture distributor. Hatta protested strongly against Miramax’s use of a seminude Asian woman viewed from the back as the illustration on the video sleeve, feeling that the artwork failed to represent the theme of her film and attempted to give it a misleading sexual context.

In 2000, Hatta accepted a position as assistant professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA. There, she taught classes in filmmaking and gave workshops on various aspects of filmmaking, including fund-raising, shooting on location, and screenwriting. She also conducted workshops at the Art Institute of Los Angeles. For Hatta, filmmaking was a craft that could be taught and learned, and so she readily shared her filmmaking experience and expertise with students. In 2001, she received a Media Arts Fellowship from the Tribeca Film Institute.

In March 2005, Hatta premiered her second film, Fishbowl, at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. The short film, an adaptation of three chapters of Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers (1996), was shot on location in Hawaii and also contains dialogue in Hawaiian pidgin English. For this project, as for Picture Bride, authenticity played a primary role in Hatta’s creation of the film.

On July 20, 2005, Hatta died in a drowning accident near Encinitas, California. She was preparing to return to Hawaii that October for the first Hawaiian screening of Fishbowl at the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival. In 2006, Fishbowl was shown on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series Independent Lens.

During her career, Hatta received numerous awards and honors. At UCLA, she received the Kuwahara Creative Arts Award, the UCLA Women’s Affiliate Award, and the Dorothy Arzner Award honoring an excellent woman director. For Picture Bride, the Hawaii Council of the City and County of Honolulu gave her a certificate denoting her outstanding achievement in film as a female cinematographer. She also received testimonials of commendation from the Hawaii Senate and House of Representatives.

Significance

Hatta made significant contributions to the independent film industry, the Asian American community, and the creation of opportunities for women in filmmaking. Her immensely successful film Picture Bride was the first film to be written, directed, and produced by Asian American women. It was also one of the first independent films to be produced in Hawaii. Hatta proved that local, non-Hollywood female filmmakers could write, direct, and produce films that would gain global recognition. The authenticity of her filmmaking, with its use of Hawaiian pidgin English and careful portrayal of Japanese Hawaiian experiences, made an important contribution to the Asian American community by elucidating its cultural history. As a teacher of her craft, Hatta also had an important influence on the future development of the independent filmmaking industry.

Bibliography

Biskind, Peter. Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. New York: Simon, 2004. Print.

Hatta, Kayo, and Mari Hatta. Screenplay of Picture Bride. Sundance issue of Scenario: The Magazine of Screenwriting Art 1.3 (1995): 103–43. Print.

"Kayo Hatta (1958-2005)." Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com/name/nm0368981/. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Levy, Emanuel. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film. New York: New York UP, 2001. Print.

Spickard, Paul. Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an EthnicGroup. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008. Print.