Profile




Kano is a former educator and current filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California (Tongva Land).

She uses the camera as a tool for social revelation, creating intimate narratives and essay films that explore coming-of-age, the complex dynamics of migrant families, and cultural mythology as something both inherited and continually reinvented. Her films often stay close, held in close-ups, pauses, and what is almost said.

Attuned to language as both distance and intimacy, she often works across languages, shaped by speaking to her family in words that feel familiar yet incomplete.

Her work approaches migration not as movement alone, but as a condition lived in the body, in gesture, silence, and the textures of everyday life, where small moments carry the weight of larger stories.

Kano is an MFA student in Documentary Directing and Production at UCLA.


Email



Education

University of California Los Angeles
MFA Documentary Directing & Production, 2028

Loyola Marymount University              
M.Ed. Transformative Education, Concentration in Literacy, 2024

Soka University of America                  
B.A. Liberal Arts, Concentration in Literature and Film, 2021

Employment

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
June 2022 – June 2025
English and History Teacher

Asian CineVision
September 2020 – November 2021
Staff Writer

Soka University of America - Community Cinema 
September 2020 – May 2021
Associate Producer


Skills

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Avid Media Composer
Avid Pro Tools
Procreate
Procreate Dreams
G Suite 
Microsoft Office Suite


Awards

John H. and Patricia W. Mitchell Endowed Scholarship Recipient
Institution: University of California Los Angeles
Year: 2025-2026

Merit Scholar
Institution: Soka University of America
Year: 2017-2021
   

Kano Umezaki





documentary filmmaker