2008 Angel Film Awards Monaco International Film Festival angel awards

Angel Film Awards Member of Jury : KEIKO KOBAYASHI

JAPANESE ACTRESS KEIKO KOBAYASHI BIOGRAPHY

Keiko KobayashiKeiko Kobayashi is a Japanese actress, screenwriter and award-winning producer. Her starring roles to date include China Central Television’s “Heishinrin” and the Japan-China film collaboration “Jun-Ai,” for which she was also screenwriter and producer.

Ms. Kobayashi first took the stage in China as a member of a friendship delegation from Japan to China on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. It was while there that she learned more about the plight of Japanese nationals who had settled in Japanese-occupied China in the 1930s and 40s with the encouragement of the Japan’s government. These settlers were cruelly abandoned by the Japanese military when Japan lost the war, and many still live there even today. Her meeting with one woman who had actually been left behind is what eventually led Ms. Kobayashi to write, act in and produce the film “Jun-Ai” (True Love).

Her efforts have led to screenings in Japan, throughout China, at the UNHCR-organized “Tokyo Refugee Film Festival 2008” and the “2007 Angel Film Awards Monaco International Film Festival.” It was at the “Angel Film Awards” that her film took the highest number of awards of the festival – Best Producer, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Independent Spirit and the coveted Angel Peace Award.

Keiko Kobayashi is promoting a new kind of film industry structure that cultivates movies, makes profits and applies the revenue toward further movie-making as well as supporting children of our world through building schools. This structure was applied to Jun-Ai. But even before the film was finished, supporters gathered funds to build the Hope Elementary School, near Mount Taishan, China. And since Jun-Ai’s screening, a portion of ticket proceeds have gone to the construction of the Jun-Ai Kindergarten that was completed and opened in October of this year.

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