In July, after more than five years of work on the film, we offi­cial­ly wrapped prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy on Find­ing KUKAN. Hooray! With the sup­port of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts we were final­ly able to col­lab­o­rate with the cre­ative genius­es behind Shad­ow­Light Pro­duc­tions and Blind Design to pro­duce and film the gor­geous shad­ow the­ater recre­ations for our film. The month we spent in a dark­ened stu­dio ware­house space in Oak­land was an expe­ri­en­tial les­son for me in break­ing through fear and frus­tra­tion to cre­ate mag­ic – the kind of mag­ic that can only occur by work­ing with oth­ers. You can view some behind the scenes pho­tographs of our work process HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Cast & Crew for FINDING KUKAN Shad­ow Scenes

The fall brought anoth­er major gift – being accept­ed as one of the four doc­u­men­tary fel­lows at the NALIP ARC Female Film­mak­er Res­i­den­cy in North Troy, VT. Besides get­ting to see the fall col­ors and gor­geous VT land­scape, I was able to work­shop an ear­ly rough cut draft of Find­ing KUKAN with a group of super tal­ent­ed and sup­port­ive female film­mak­ers of diverse back­grounds. Their feed­back and encour­age­ment con­tin­ues to inspire me to take this film to a new level.

2015 NALIP ARC Res­i­den­cy Par­tic­i­pants (pho­to by Adele Pham)

Thanks to the sup­port of hun­dreds of peo­ple, we are on track to pre­miere Find­ing KUKAN in 2016 to cel­e­brate two major anniver­saries – the 75th anniver­sary of the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, and the 75th anniver­sary of the Acad­e­my Award doc­u­men­tary cat­e­go­ry. Much work on the film still needs to be done: music com­po­si­tion, visu­al effects, sound design, col­or cor­rect­ing, and licens­ing our archival ele­ments. But we are tak­ing a lit­tle hol­i­day break to cel­e­brate a very reward­ing year and toast to the many adven­tures ahead.