Associate Professor
Production Division member

Film & Video Production
Graduate Studies in Media Arts

BA, UC Santa Barbara; MFA, New York University

In 1998, Yuri Makino joined the School of Media Arts where she teaches film production and screenwriting. Her administrative service has included Production Division Head and Acting Associate Director of the School.

Ms. Makino received her B.A. with Highest Honors in Film Studies and in German Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1990. In 1996, she completed the M.F.A. Film Graduate Program at New York University.

In May Ms. Makino was awarded a 2009 Emerging Artist Grant from the Contemporary Forum at the Phoenix Museum. The grant will help fund her current project, Animal Encounters, a study of animal and human relationships. The project features wild and captive dolphins filmed in the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, respectively.

To produce, 111 Degrees Longitude, Ms. Makino received a Hanson Film Institute grant and an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. This experimental documentary is a collaborative piece produced with filmmaker Cindy Stillwell in Bozeman, Montana. The video explores modern notions of home by two women living along the 111th meridian in the American west. 111 Degrees Longitude premiered at the Big Sky Film Festival in February 2009 and screened at the Arizona International Film Festival in April.

In 2007 Ms. Makino completed the short film, Alma, which was filmed in Tucson with a crew comprised of industry professionals, and Media Arts faculty, alumni and students, as well as students from Pima Community College.

Alma premiered at the Humboldt Film Festival where it won The Ledo Matteoli Award for Best Immigrant Story. It recently received 3 awards from the 2008 Baltimore Women's Film Festival for Best Short Film, Best Director and Best Local Filmmaker (for executive producer Vicky Westover). It was also awarded a Best Director Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival in New York, Best Narrative for the Faculty Juried Screenings competition at the 2007 University Film and Video Association conference, and a 2007 Accolade Award for Excellence in the Independent Short Film category.

To date Alma has screened in 22 festivals. See the links below for photos, a trailer, and articles.

Ms. Makino is in development with the feature-length version of Alma, a film about a nineteen-year-old Chicana who discovers she is not a U.S. citizen and is jailed in a maximum security prison. Alma, co-written by Ms. Makino, was awarded semi-finalist status at the 1999 Sundance Institute Feature Film Lab and awarded the 2000 Roy W. Dean Grant. She also received over ,000 in grants from the Amazon Foundation and the University of Arizona for the development of Alma.

Tokyo Equinox, Ms. Makino's poetic documentary about visiting her estranged Japanese father, premiered at the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival in March 2004 and has had over two dozen screenings. Tokyo Equinox was was the winner of the 2006 Tucson Community Film Contest.

Llama Walks, her personal documentary about her family won the Best of Arizona Award at the 2003 Arizona International Film Festival and an Honorable Mention at the 2003 The University Film and Video Association Juried Screenings.

In 1999 Ms. Makino was awarded the Arizona Commission on the Arts Visual Fellowship for Umeboshi (Pickled Plums), a film about a Japanese American girl facing the complexities of cultural identity and familial ties. Umeboshi has screened at festivals around the country and on public television.

Ms. Makino has worked in the independent film community and commercial industry in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

e-mail: ymakino@email.arizona.edu
office: 520.621.8974

Marshall Bldg, Room 228

To read an article on Ms. Makino's work.: http://uanews.org/ror/winter05/film.html
To read a profile on Ms. Makino and her short film "Alma.": http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/relatedstories/191134.php
To view stills from "Alma.": http://www.gonzaloamat.com/projects/alma/index.html
To view a trailer of "Alma" open "Films" link.: http://www.gonzaloamat.com/