Friday, October 19, 2018

Junko Kajino & Ed Koziarski

Film Production Company

“Homesick Blues”

Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski own and operate the full service media production company Homesick Blues Productions. As they were developing a narrative film based on Junko’s childhood on a cattle ranch in Nagano, central Japan, the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and meltdown struck northern Japan. Artists quickly shifted their focus to a nonfiction project addressing the nuclear disaster for the documentary series Uncanny Terrain. They kept their attention on Japanese farmers, finding inspiration in Fukushima organic farmers’ commitment to revive and continue cultivating land that others declared hopelessly contaminated.

Junko and Ed wrote, produced and directed the psychological drama feature film The First Breath of Tengan Rei. Erika Oda of Kore-Eda’s After Life stars as an Okinawan woman who kidnaps the teenage son of a U.S. Marine convicted of raping her when she was a girl. An IFP Independent Film Lab selection, First Breath screened theatrically, and at schools, community groups and festivals across the U.S., Japan and in India.

Their short film Homesick Blues, starring pop singer Zoey (now Remah) as an Osaka girl running off to America to sing the blues, won the IFP/Chicago Film Festival and played the Hawaii and Chicago international film festivals, among others.

Kajino is a fellow of Kartemquin Films’ inaugural Diverse Voices Docs Program. Koziarski was line producer and Kajino was production manager of Malik Bader’s fake crime documentary Street Thief, a Tribeca Film Festival selection released by A&E Indie, and of Sonny Mallhi’s forthcoming ghost story Anguish.