Filmmakers and Producers

Celine Parreñas Shimizu works as a film scholar and film/videomaker. As Associate Professor of Film and Video in Asian American Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Film and Women’s Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, she teaches popular culture, social theory, sexuality, transnational feminisms and film theory as well as television and film production. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature (2001), her M.F.A. in Film Production and Directing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (1996) and her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the U.C. Berkeley (1992).

Duke University Press recently published her book THE HYPERSEXUALITY OF RACE: PERFORMING ASIAN/AMERICAN WOMEN ON SCREEN AND SCENE. The book analyses the production of sexuality for Asian women in western modern moving image visual cultures such as early cinema, stag films, contemporary pornography, Hollywood blockbusters, musicals and independent sexually explicit media by Asian American women. Her publications include chapters and articles in STANFORD BLACK ARTS QUARTERLY; the journal WIDE ANGLE; COUNTERVISIONS (Temple, 2000); the leading feminist journal SIGNS (Chicago UP, 2004); PINAY POWER, the Filipina American Feminist Theory Anthology (Routledge, 2005); THEATRE JOURNAL (May 2005) and THE YALE JOURNAL OF LAW AND FEMINISM (June 2006). Her new book SEXUAL PROBLEMS: ASIAN AMERICAN MASCULINITIES IN THE MOVIES focuses on the production of masculinity through sexuality in Hollywood and independent films.

An internationally screened and award-winning filmmaker, her works include MAHAL MEANS LOVE AND EXPENSIVE (1993), HER UPROOTING PLANTS HER (1995) and SUPER FLIP (1997). Her recently completed digital film THE FACT OF ASIAN WOMEN (2002) received the Best Documentary Short Prize at the Big Mini DV Festival in New York, Best Picture—Women’s Issues at Zoie Fest, Winner in Long Format-Education at the 2003 DV Awards and Best of Festival-Documentary at the 2003 Berkeley International Film and Video Festival. She is currently in post-production for her next documentary BIRTHRIGHT about mothering in Santa Barbara.

For her scholarship and film work, she has received many awards, fellowships, grants and honors including the Social Science Research Council Sexuality Research Fellowship, the Stanford Asian American Studies Graduate Academic Award, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Directing Fellowship, the James Pendleton Foundation Prize and the Eisner Prize for Poetry—UC Berkeley’s highest award in the creative arts.