President

Jeannette Paulson Hereniko

President

Click photo for video    of her personal introduction

Jeannette Paulson Hereniko is best known as the Founding Director of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival, launching it in 1981 to showcase significant films from Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the USA. After-film discussions with filmmakers, scholars, and critics were an important component of the festival program since its purpose was to foster better understanding among the people of East and West. When she left her position 16 years later, the Festival was well-established with over 60,000 people attending each year, and considered by many critics to be one of the most important in the world.

In 1990, at the invitation of the Mayor of Palm Springs California, the late Sunny Bono, she became the first director of the Palm Springs International Film Festival. She continued programming Asian films for the Palm Springs Festival for several years afterward.

Ms. Hereniko has been on the Advisory Board of Cinemaya, the Asian Film Quarterly, since its inception in 1988, and was a Founding Board member of NETPAC, an international organization devoted to promoting Asia cinema. She has served on the NETPAC jury, selecting the best emerging Asian filmmaker in film festivals such as Berlin, Rotterdam, Pusan, Singapore, Brisbane, and Osian’s Cinefan in New Delhi.

In 1994, she started NETPAC/USA and organized national film tours of Asian films to University campuses. In 1996, she was appointed Director of the Asia Pacific Media Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center of Communications where she planned symposiums on Asian cinema and further developed the website Asian Film Connections (www.asianfilms.org), a site she started in 1994. When she left the Center in 2005, the site averaged 7,500 visits a day.

Ms. Hereniko produced the award-winning feature film from Fiji, The Land Has Eyes (2004). She is also President of a Hawai‘i-based production company, Te Maka Productions, Inc. She received her M.A. degree in American Studies from the University of Hawai‘i. Her thesis discussed the reception by audiences of Asian feature films screened in the United States.