WHO WE ARE
(Girl Fest is an All-Volunteer run non-profit organization)

KATHRYN XIAN,
GiRL FeST Bay Area and Hawaii, Founder & Non-Executive Director

Award winning producer/director Kathryn Xian studied film at New York University and Bard College. She was one of the original drafters and organizers of the Multi-Ethnic Studies Program (MES) implemented in 1993 at Bard College. Intent upon encouraging the growth of independent filmmaking in her home state of Hawaii, she co-founded Zang Pictures, Inc.; the only local filmmaking collective which offers education in both digital video and 16mm film production to university interns and the public.

The Problem with Being, her first of three feature length films, had been adapted from a stage play she had written in 1998 under the tutelage of renowned novelist Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Excerpts from the stage play can be found in the Asian-American anthology entitled Take Out published by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City.

She is the First Place winner and Audience Award winner in the short documentary category for her video entitled Constructions at the First Annual Short Movie Awards 2000, sponsored by PlanetOut and Ifilm. Constructions, a film about female identity and suicide, has also gone on to win a place among the best short films of 2001 Movie Awards of Girlfriends Magazine, the Adam Baran Award for Best Short Film, and local PBS and international internet broadcast. Constructions is distributed by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association. Kathryn is also the Producer/Director of critically acclaimed documentary Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place which premiered nationally at the Smithsonian Institute on October 19th 2001 as a part of the D.C. Asian Pacific American Film Festival. This documentary (recipient of the 2002 Frameline/Horizons Film and Video Completion Award) is currently touring film Festivals from Australia to Berlin and was aired by WNET in New York (PBS) in June 2003.

Several newspapers, magazines and filmmakers have written about Zang Pictures’ films including Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, Variety Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, AsianWeek, the Honolulu Advertiser, the Honolulu Weekly, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the Chicago Tribune, and director Darren Aronofsky of Requiem for a Dream. In 2002 Kathryn co-founded the Cinema Paradise~ Independent Film Festival in Honolulu which screened the U.S. premiere of the acclaimed international film 11’09’01.

She also, along with the University of Hawaii’s Women’s Studies Program, coordinated the Hawaii premiere of the Emmy award-winning film The Selling of Innocents in December of 2002, along with a panel presented by Kelly Hill of Sisters Offering Support, to raise local awareness of the trafficking of women and children for sex to and from Honolulu.

In November of 2003 Kathryn coordinated a well-publicized, peaceful demonstration outside the business address of a sex-tour operator, who soon after shut down his sex-tour operation, Video Travel. This peaceful protest was televised on four local news stations and led, along with testimony provided by Girl Fest and Equality Now, to the drafting of House Bill 2020 which was signed, in May 2004, into law as Act 82 making Hawaii the first State in the nation to illegalize sex-tourism. HB 2020 was supported by a handful of legislators including Representative Marilyn Lee and Senator Suzanne Chun Oakland. Thanks to the watchful eye of global women's advocacy group Equality Now, our local legislators, and the news networks, our demonstration at Video travel and testimonials at the Capitol proved successful in helping to affect awareness and the creation of unprecedented legislation to protect women globally. Currently, Washington State has modeled similar legislation after Act 82 to passage in their legislature. Currently, Kathryn is working on introducing local Hawaii legislation to illegalize sex-trafficking.

Xian is also the founder of the Hawaii non-profit 501(c)3 The Safe Zone Foundation, an organization founded to produce educational multimedia projects. She is the non-executive director of Girl Fest Hawaii, an annual multimedia festival and conference in Honolulu whose mission it is to prevent violence against women and girls through education and art. She is established Girl Fest Bay Area in March 2006 in conjunction with Youth Speaks and The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation among many wonderful other organizations and individuals.

She co-founded the Rape-Free Zone Coalition on April 4th 2005, which was responsible for enacting change at the University of Hawaii on August 29th 2005 to declare its system (10 Campuses) Rape-Free Zones and requiring all managerial and executive staff to attend an anti-sexism leadership training at Girl Fest led by Jackson Katz, former member of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military and founder of MVP Strategies; an unprecedented event in the University’s history. Xian was also awarded the 2005 Ellison S. Onizuka Human and Civil Rights Award by the National Education Association on July 2nd 2005 and also received the 2006 Soroptimists International of the America's Women Helping Women Award in July 2006.

Her newly released film Hawaii Slam: Poetry in Paradise premiered on October 26th 2005 at the 25th Anniversary of the Hawaii International Film Festival. This film reveals the racial stereotypes which four Hawaii slam poets must dispel to stake their claim at the National Poetry Slam in 2004—the first time Hawaii was represented at this competition. It premiered in New York City for the Pacifika Film Festival on May 20th 2006 and screened at the 2006 Maui Film Festival in Wailea.

NIKKI STEVENS,
Technical Coordinator

Stevens is a computer programmer and administration specialist who holds a Masters in Educational Foundations with a concentration in Women’s Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has been a head coordinator for Girl Fest Hawaii since 2004 and has been instrumental in the development of the organization. Along with Xian, she is an active member of the Hawaii Anti-Trafficking Task Force organized by the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office and an active member of the Anti-Trafficking Task Force initiated by the Hawaii Legislature specifically called to draft and introduce an anti-trafficking State law in January of 2007. She has formerly worked as a layout designer with Pacific Business News, a youth counselor with Hale Kipa, and as a freelance website designer.