Steven Okazaki

Steven Toll Okazaki (born March 12, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker known for his raw, cinéma vérité-style documentaries that frequently show ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. He has received a Peabody Award, a Primetime Emmy and has been nominated for four Academy Awards, winning an Oscar for the documentary short subject, Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo.

Steven Okazaki
Okazaki in 2017
Born	Steven Toll Okazaki (1952-03-12) March 12, 1952 (age 70) Venice, California, United States
Alma mater	San Francisco State University
Occupations	Director Producer Writer Editor Cinematographer
Years active	1976–present
Spouse	Peggy Orenstein ​ (m. 1991)​
Children	Daisy Tomoko
Website	http://www.farallonfilms.com/

Career

Steven Okazaki started his career at Churchill Films in 1976, making narrative and documentary shorts. In 1982, he produced Survivors for WGBH Boston, a documentary short about Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors. In 1985, he received his first Academy Award nomination for Unfinished Business, about three Nisei Japanese Americans who challenged the Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in court. In 1987, he wrote and directed the independent film, Living on Tokyo Time, which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released by Skouras Pictures.

In 1991, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo, about Estelle Peck Ishigo, a Caucasian artist who accompanied her Japanese American husband to a Japanese internment camp. Okazaki continued to make documentary films for PBS and later with HBO. In 2006, he received his third Academy Award nomination for The Mushroom Club, a personal documentary about his journey to Japan to interview atomic bomb survivors on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He co-received the 2008 "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking" Primetime Emmy Award for White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his fourth Oscar nomination in 2009, for the documentary short The Conscience of Nhem En. His production company, Farallon Films, is based in Berkeley, California.

Okazaki was also involved as a multi-instrumentalist in a San Francisco punk rock music group called The Maids (1977–79), whose sole record, a single called 'Back to Bataan,' gained some notoriety by way of later punk music compilations.^[1]

Filmography

Year	Title	Distributor
1976	A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N-S	Farallon Films
1982	Survivors	PBS
1983	The Only Language She Knows	Farallon Films
1985	Unfinished Business	PBS
1986	Living on Tokyo Time	Skouras Pictures
1988	Hunting Tigers	Farallon Films
1991	Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo	PBS
1992	Troubled Paradise	PBS
1993	The Lisa Theory	Finnish TV
1994	American Sons	PBS
1995	Alone Together: Young Adults Living With HIV	NHK
1996	Life Was Good: The Claudia Peterson Story	NHK
1999	Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End Of The Street	HBO
2002	The Fair	PBS
2005	Rehab	HBO
2006	The Mushroom Club	HBO, Cinemax
2007	White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki	HBO
2009	The Conscience of Nhem En	HBO
2010	Crushed: The Oxycontin Interview	Farallon Films
2011	Approximately Nels Cline	Farallon Films
2011	All We Could Carry	Farallon Films
2014	Giap's Last Day At The Ironing Board Factory	PBS
2015	Heroin: Cape Cod, USA	HBO
2016	Mifune: The Last Samurai	Strand Releasing

Personal life

Okazaki has been married since 1991 to writer Peggy Orenstein. They have a daughter, Daisy Tomoko, born in 2003.^[2]

References

1. "Back to Bataan". L.A. Weekly. June 21, 2000. from the original on July 10, 2017.
2. "Orenstein uncovers pain of girls' hook-up culture". San Francisco Chronicle. June 21, 2016. Retrieved December 18, 2019.

External links

• Steven Okazaki at IMDb
• Farallon Films Official Website