Randall Okita
Directing
Biography
Randall Okita is a Japanese Canadian artist and filmmaker known for creating work that involves rich visual language and innovative approaches to storytelling. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions, awarded internationally, and screened around the world. Recent work includes directing the feature film See for Me (premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival), writing and creating the virtual reality experience The Book of Distance (Sundance, Venice, Tribeca) with the National Film Board of Canada, and showing A Place Between, a solo exhibition of artwork at the Prince Takamado Gallery in Tokyo. Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Okita lives and works in Toronto and Japan.
Known For
When blind former Olympic skier Sophie Scott cat-sits in a secluded mansion, she gets caught in the crossfire of a home invasion scheme. She must rely on a sighted Army veteran via the See for Me app to help her survive the night.
See for Me
A research student who has a psychotic breakdown and is remanded to the custody of her aunt and uncle in a small town.
Menace
This short documentary gives us insight into the singing prowess of renowned tenor Ben Heppner, one of Canada’s pre-eminent musical ambassadors.
Ben Heppner: Moving Through Music
A teenage thief tries to leave town to escape the violence that threatens him and he people he loves.
The Lockpicker
This short animation presents the haunting story of two brothers who share the scars, though not the memories, of an untold history that has driven them to existential extremes.
The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer
Fish in Barrel depicts a young man facing his demons as his struggle erupts into visions that question what lies below the surface.
Fish in Barrel
No Contract is a visceral video that combines elements of performance, sculptural cinema and documentary to explore themes of urgency, isolation and escape, as well as the notions of torment and renewal, desire and destruction.
No Contract
No description available.
The Book of Distance
Machine with Wishbone is an entirely live action movie shot without special effects, featuring the work of internationally celebrated artist Arthur Ganson. Using innovative camera choreography, photo sculpture, and kinetic sculpture, Machine with Wishbone tells the tale of a stoic mechanical wishbone on its journey through a world of snoring beds, paper birds, and places you have to see to believe.
Machine With Wishbone
Evoking themes of protest, destruction, and resurrection, this beguiling new work from visual artist Randall Okita transposes three-dimensional kinetic sculptures to the cinema screen.
Portrait as a Random Act of Violence
An eccentric documentary crew treks across the vast roadways of Alberta, Canada to document monuments, museums, and other roadside curios. Armed with only a loose idea of the project’s final form, the wayward director struggles to manage a slew of messy personal entanglements and rivalries embroiling her collaborators. They look for meaning in the landscape, but their search turns inward as they’re inspired to reckon with their own lives.