A documentary featuring Joy Chong-Stannard, a video producer/director with the Center for Labor Education & Research at the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu, recently received an award for an international media arts competition.
The 2022 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts awarded “Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi: Joy Chong-Stannard,” a documentary directed by Anne Misawa of UH Mānoa, as the “Best of Competition” winner for its Faculty Documentary Competition in the Micro-Documentary Category (runtime 5:00 to 9:59 minutes, including all credits).
The BEA Festival of Media Arts is BEA’s international digital media and broadcast competition for faculty and students from over 300 participating schools and over 1,450 annual entries from around the world.
Misawa’s documentary, “Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi: Joy Chong-Stannard,” was created as part of the third season of Reel Wāhine of Hawai’i, a documentary short film series on Hawaiʻi women working in the film industry. The series is among the film productions of Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking (HWF), a nonprofit organization that advocates for women and girls, telling their stories through film with an intersectional lens.
The producers of Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi are Shirley Thompson and Vera Zambonelli, who is an Academy for Creative Media at UH West Oʻahu lecturer. Zambonelli is also the founder and executive director of Hawai‘i Women in Filmmaking
According to an October press release from HWF announcing the premiere of the series’ third season, Chong-Stannard is a live television and documentary director whose career spans 40 years in public television. Her documentaries, such as “Canefield Songs: Holehole Bushi,” explore local culture, the dynamic social and economic upheavals of Hawaiʻi’s history and its impact on everyday working people.
“What a wonderful, joyful opportunity to work together with the HWF ʻohana and with Joy!” Misawa said in the release. “So deserving of a spotlight for many years, Joy’s modest grace and steadfast work has been a backbone to the Public TV and the documentary landscape, illuminating voices of ‘every person’ in Hawaiʻi to a larger arena. I’ve learned so much from Joy and hope that this glimpse of her as well as of those of others will further illuminate possibilities for many.”
Dr. Chris Conybeare, media and labor law specialist at the UH West Oʻahu Center for Labor Education and Research (CLEAR), said that Chong-Stannard has been involved with CLEAR since 1982, when the two of them took over production of the “Rice & Roses” television series on Hawaiʻi Public Television, which is now PBS Hawaiʻi.
In addition to helping produce and direct studio-based “Rice & Roses” programs for CLEAR, she has also been the editor for several well-known CLEAR documentaries and programs including “Picture Brides” (1986), “Brothers Under the Skin” (1986), “1946 The Great Hawaiʻi Sugar Strike” (1996), “The Great Hawaiʻi Dock Strike” (1999), and “Canefield Songs: Holehole Bushi” (2015).
“She is one of Hawaii’s most accomplished television directors,” Conybeare said. “Her passion for documenting Hawaiʻi history, with emphasis on the stories of the working class, has been one reason we have the most extensive film and video archive collections about the plantation era and the Hawai’i labor history in the world.”
Conybeare added because of Chong-Stannard’s history, she has become a go-to expert on archival media, including film, video tape, and music.
“I was delighted that she was selected as the subject of this documentary and delighted that the program was an award winner,” Conybeare said. “As far as I’m concerned, Joy is herself an award winner.”