GOOD TALK WITH KIMI TAKESUE
Director, Producer, Cinematographer and Editor of ONLOOKERS
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened widely at festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Modern Art and have aired/streamed on PBS, IFC, the Sundance Channel and the Criterion Channel. Many of Takesue’s films explore the complex dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and representations. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Chicken and Egg Award” from Chicken and Egg Pictures honoring women filmmakers who’ve made a significant contribution to the documentary field.
Takesue has been honored with a full retrospective on the illustrious Criterion Channel as well as a 2026 retrospective at Cornell University and Cornell Cinema. In 2025, Takesue had her first mid-career retrospective in Asia at the Asian Film Archive in Singapore and NTU-Center for Contemporary Art.
Takesue’s recent documentary ONLOOKERS (2023)--an immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos— was named one of the Best Documentaries of 2024 by Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times. Takesue’s films have been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Variety, Film Comment, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal among others. She has been a frequent guest speaker and artist in residence at numerous colleges and universities including Yale University, Brown University, Texas A&M, Williams College, Temple, Emerson, and Vanderbilt among many others. Takesue is Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.
Expertise
"Kimi is a fabulous speaker: charismatic, warm, insightful and vulnerable. The Q&A went on for 90 minutes before the venue forced us to shut it down (and even then, students lined up for a full 30 minutes afterwards to keep talking with her)! “
--Mary Posatko, Assistant Professor and Head of Documentary Filmmaking, Department of Theatre, Television and Film, SDSU
“Few filmmakers can field questions from an audience with such generosity and eloquence. The audience walked away thinking about the fruitful workings of ambivalence and contradiction that can come with being both a tourist in and documentarian of foreign topographies.”
-Marc Francis, Manager of Film Programming, Yale University
“Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers screened to a full house at Yale. Takesue helped the audience—a mix of Yale students and the New Haven community—understand both her filmmaking process and the larger context of being an observer in the world. It was an ideal and memorable conclusion to our global documentaries series.”
-Diane Berrett Brown, Deputy Director, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University
“Kimi Takesue's residency at Texas A&M had deep and meaningful impacts on our students and community. The undergraduate and graduate students who took part in her many classroom visits reported the engagement had inspired them in their creative work and their scholarship--to make more challenging and exciting films, and to incorporate filmmaking into their research projects in new and different ways. In addition, Prof. Takesue was extremely generous with her time and energy at public screenings and talkbacks; where she provided engaging insights into her creative process, aesthetic philosophy, and personal experience. Kimi Takesue brought work of exceptional quality and beauty to our community, and we are grateful to have hosted her.”
-James Ball, Associate Dean for Industry and Community Engagement, Texas A&M University
“Kimi spent a day with our documentary students (both undergraduate and graduate-level). Kimi managed to assess them at lightning speed, to meet them where they were, to educate them and most importantly, to inspire them. She gave specific, excellent feedback to each group while pulling the threads together into an overarching Masterclass on technique, style, personal voice, and the critical importance of knowing your themes and your why. The students lined up for an hour after class to ask for more feedback, to ask follow-up questions, and to express their gratitude to her.”
--Mary Posatko, Assistant Professor and Head of Documentary Filmmaking, Department of Theatre, Television and Film, SDSU
Speaking History
Kimi has had FILM RETROSPECTIVES at:
-Cornell Cinema & Cornell University
-Asian Film Archive, Singapore
-Metrograph Channel
-Criterion Channel
Kimi has been an ARTIST IN RESIDENCE at:
-Texas A&M University
-San Diego State University
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES WHERE I HAVE SPOKEN (selected):
-Yale University
-Brown University
-Cornell University
-Vanderbilt University
-Texas A&M University
-Williams College
-Emerson College
-Temple University
-San Diego State University
-Pratt University
-School of Visual Art
-Mount Holyoke College