Born in Los Angeles, Japanese-American Roddy Bogawa studied art and played in punk bands before turning to filmmaking. He received his MFA degree from the University of California at San Diego where he made his first two short films which have screened extensively in festivals, museums, and national and international art galleries. Moving to New York, he attended the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art and in 1991, he completed his first feature, the experimental narrative SOME DIVINE WIND. A mixture of fictional and documentary material, this expressionistic film focused on the paradox of assimilation while trying to hold on to one’s cultural perspective. The film was selected for the Sundance Film Festival (Dramatic Competition), the Mannheim International Film Festival (Germany), the Asian American International Film Festival (New York), the Hawaii International Film Festival, and the Fukuoka Asian Film Festival (Japan). SOME DIVINE WIND has also shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the 1993 Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been broadcast on New York WNET’s Independent Focus and WDR First German Television and is distributed by Third World Newsreel and Strand Releasing.

 

His second feature film JUNK was praised by critic Amy Taubin as ‘everything indie film no longer is’ having its premiere at the New York Underground and as well as screening at the Museum of Modern Art, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Asian American International Film Festival and Exground Filmfest in Wiesbaden. His more recent short films have been featured in the New York Film Festival, Oberhausen Festival Internationale, the Black Maria Film and Video Festival (Director’s Choice Prize), and the 1995 Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Cinematexas Short Film Festival.

 

His third feature, I WAS BORN, BUT… had it’s premiere at the New York Underground Film Festival as the closing night film where it won the Festival Choice Award and was reviewed in Variety as “a welcome addition to the underground canon”. He has been nominated for the Rockefeller Fellowship as well as the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and been the recipient of numerous awards including the Creative Capital Foundation, American Center Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Art Matters Inc., and the Louis B. Mayer Foundation. His films are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.