About Me

Kaia is a filmmaker dedicated to meaningful and curious storytelling currently based in Washington DC and working primarily as the Multimedia Content Lead at Connect4Climate - World Bank Group. She is the creator and director of Climate Countdown, an award-winning web-series that maps out the ecology of climate solutions, and as a freelance filmmaker has created hundreds of videos that promote climate awareness and action. Her short documentary Fugetsu-Do, an intimate portrait of a Japanese sweet shop that been a subtle landmark at the heart of Downtown LA for well over a century, has screened at over 70 film festivals globally and accumulated more than 20 awards. In New York, she collaborated closely with Unreel Films for years, editing dozens of films for the Juilliard School as well as short films, documentaries, and dance videos; worked as an assistant editor and archive manager on the PBS documentary Power to Heal, about the untold story of how Medicare helped desegregate American hospitals in the 1960s; and created short content for such organizations as the United Nations Global Compact, UN Foundation, Rachel’s Network, Our Climate, 350.org, Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, Pathway to Paris, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Before becoming a New Yorker, Kaia lived in the UK where she was the lead producer at the BAFTA-winning production company ArthurCox. There she produced, line produced, and production managed commercials, shorts, TV shows and feature films for well-renowned companies such as Disney Jr, Aardman Animations, the BBC, the UK Film Council and 20th Century Fox TV. Kaia is a graduate of the University of Bristol in England where she received a first class degree in Drama: Theatre, Film & Television.

Education & Training

Originally, I wanted to be an astronomer, but that's going way back to when I was un-schooled as a Californian kid.  Skip forward to Carpinteria High School where I discovered a love of both theatre and film.  During my senior year, I directed the mainstage production of Macbeth and an all-senior-girl production of Steel Magnolias; simultaneously, my brother and I undertook the epic project of creating a senior video that had in it footage of every single student in our graduating class.  So epic was it that we missed our final American History exam due to rendering problems, but that didn't stop me from graduating as a Valedictorian.  On graduation day I gave my speech and then rushed off to sell VHS copies (yes, VHS) of the senior video to teary-eyed parents.

As a recently graduated seventeen-year-old, I travelled to Guanajuato, Mexico, where I studied clowning at the Estudio Busqueda de Pantomima-Teatro with Sigfrido Aguilar in a month-long intensive workshop.  After taking some film and Spanish classes, I trained in Technical Theatre at the Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts and was awarded the Jack Shouse Scholarship upon graduation.  I have always been a bit of a 'schoolie' so while backpacking around Europe the following year, I started playing with the idea of finishing my degree in England - since they spoke English there and I'd heard they were pretty good at the whole theatre thing.  I had a wander around Bristol and thought "Yeah, I could live here" so I moved to the UK in 2007 to study Drama: Theatre, Film and Television at the University of Bristol.

The course at Bristol University allowed me to pursue both theatrical and cinematic endeavours and to my delight I found myself studying screenwriting with BAFTA-winning director Esther May Campbell, Dogma-95 obstruction-style filmmaking with Richard Misek, and Shakespeare with Martin White, an academic advisor to the RSC and the Globe in London.  I was one of only five students in my class to receive a First Class degree at the end of the Bachelor's programme and the Drama Department awarded me the John Lavender Award for significant off-screen and off-stage contributions.  I was also shortlisted as one of the Top 10 Media and Arts Graduates in the UK, all of which made me feel that my decision to move to England had been a good one.

Film & Television

When the Iraq war began, the only way I found to channel my anger into something productive was by making a documentary about how people my age were feeling about the prospect of war.  We went around to college campuses across California and asked young people like us how they felt about the invasion and what they thought the consequences would be.  This impulse to use film as a way of interacting with the world around me continues to drive my work today.

From 2010-2014 I worked with BAFTA-winning production company ArthurCox as their main producer and  day-to-day manager of their studio in Bristol.  Because of the variety of content that they produced, I was able to work in many different styles, including: archive, 2D Flash animation, stop-motion, live-action, CG, mixed media, oil-on-glass and traditional hand drawn animation.  Throughout my time there, I worked closely with the Aardman Animation commercials department and produced such exciting projects as the TV series Nina Needs To Go for Disney Jr, the pilot series Storeys of Thomas for 20th Century Fox TV, and sections of the animated feature A Liar's Autobiography for Bill & Ben Productions.  More of my work with ArthurCox can be found on www.worldofarthurcox.com.

While working in Bristol, I was chosen to be one of BBC Bristol's on-call Assistant Production Managers, I created 'Making Of' documentaries for Electric Shadow Company and Bristol Film Office, and I worked with Scratchmark Films on the football documentary Kingsmeadow that aired on Channel 4 and ESPN.  I have been invited to be on panels in Bristol, Exeter, Venice, New York, Washington DC and Marrakech to discuss my work as a filmmaker.  My 2010 short film Looking Forward to Yesterday premiered at Rooftop Films in New York City and my web-series Climate Countdown was awarded the Put a Price on Carbon Award for Best Short Film by the World Bank as part of their global Film4Climate competition.  I frequently freelance for Unreel Films as an editor and camera assistant/boom op, am currently working on the PBS documentary Power to Heal about how Medicare was used to desegregate American hospitals in 1966, and edited the narrative short films Game Night, Sizemic, Alistair's Wednesday (NYCIFF, Laguna Film Festival, LA Cinefest, The Open Door), and short docs Fugetsu-Do and Without a Mirror.

Theatre

The godmother of modern American theatre Hallie Flanagan once said, "The theatre, when it's good, is always dangerous" - and I’ve come to realize that that's why I like it.  There is a particular phenomenon that occurs when an audience experiences a live performance that speaks the unspoken, emotes the repressed, makes conscious the unconscious – their minds begin to expand and think.  And a thinking citizen is a dangerous thing for those who don’t want the status quo to change.    

I have performed clown acts in a drained concrete pool in Mexico, spent a fair amount of time pushing scenery around backstage across California, and devised work to be performed on fly floors, in dressing rooms and in all corners of the Bristol University Drama Department in England.  At the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts I learned how to sew, weld, paint, mop floors, build furniture, focus lights and call shows; at Bristol University I learned how to devise, analyse, collaborate, contextualise Shakespeare and move like Pina Bausch.  In my professional life, I have stage managed large-scale musicals like Beauty and the Beast for PCPA Theaterfest, which included over 500 cues, and touring shows like The Odyssey for Boxtales Theater Company, which used masks, movement, music, AcroYoga, jumping stilts and aerial silks to tell Homer's classic tale.  

As a university student, I directed the Brechtian Cradle Will Rock and the musical The Last Five Years along with sitting on the committees for all three theatre societies and producing/ managing theatrical events, shows and productions of all sizes and types.  When I was a teenager, I directed my fellow students in Macbeth and we took home the top two awards, Best Scene & Best Performance of the Tournament, at the Henry Kemp-Blaire Shakespeare Festival, a competition between other Shakespeare nerds from high schools all across California.  I believe I was the only student director there that day.

Teaching

A few months after graduating, the University of Bristol asked me to return to the Drama Department to do some teaching for them.  Over the next three years I acted as a Teacher and Associate Teacher for: 

• MA Film & Television students, teaching “Producing Documentary” sessions and supervising a small group of producing students on their fiction films.

• Final Year Undergraduates, supervising their independent study projects and industrial placements, which included marking final 5,000 word essays and conducting viva voci.

• First Year Undergraduates, teaching “Producing Film & Animation” sessions and editing on Final Cut Pro 7.

I supervised numerous student internships during my tenure at ArthurCox and am currently assisting the Film Coordinator at Montclair State University in organising summer internships for their students at New York-based production companies.  I also spent many summers (ten to be exact) teaching and managing Lobero Circus Camp for children aged 8-12 and a few summers at Boxtales Theater Camp that focused on theatre using masks, movement, and music.  If you want to learn how to juggle or some basic African drumming rhythms, I'm your woman.

Photography

I find that when I have a camera in my hand, I look at the world differently.  I find myself hyper aware of my surroundings, my eyes carefully examining the world for what would make a good photograph.  Sometimes they find a wall spattered with different colour paint and the forked prongs of a crack stretching across it; sometimes it's a look passing between two people or a moment of affection or anger or loneliness etched on someone's face; sometimes it's a bird silhouetted against a dramatic landscape or a tree lit as if from within.  

Most of my photos capture something real out in the world - the magic of photography is its ability to compress an ephemeral moment into a static image that you can visit again and again.  From 2015-2016 I was the assistant manager of LA Photo Party East, an event photography company based out of LA and NY, and have also worked as a freelance photographer, placed in several competitions over the years, and had photos published in magazines and in an obscure Italian novel.  In the year preceding my 365 days / 365 videos project, I embarked on a 365 days / 365 photos challenge with my brother (also a photographer), which resulted in a self-published book.