“Diamond Diplomacy” Screening and Special Director’s Talk

Yuriko Gamo Romer is an award-winning director and producer whose recent films explore the cultural and political dimensions of sport. Her short documentary Baseball Behind Barbed Wire, about Japanese American incarceration during World War II, is currently in distribution and has won Best Short Documentary at the Chandler International Film Festival, Special Jury Award at Waco Independent Film Festival, Audience Award at Films of Remembrance, and Best Cinematography at the United Nations Association Film Festival.

Her previous feature, Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful, is the only documentary about Keiko Fukuda (1913–2013), the first woman to attain a tenth-degree black belt in judo. The film screened at over 25 international festivals, won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the 2013 International Festival of Sport Films in Moscow, was broadcast nationally on PBS, and is in distribution in Japan.

Romer’s earlier work Occidental Encounters won multiple awards, including a Student Academy Award (Gold Medal) and the Jimmy Stewart Memorial Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival. Her other short films—My IMMIGRANT Story, Kids Will Be Kids, Sunnyside of the Slope, and Friend Ships—have screened at festivals worldwide.

Born in Japan and raised in the U.S., Romer is bilingual and bicultural. She holds a BFA in Art and Design from UCLA and a Master’s degree in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University, where she was a teaching fellow, a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Scholar, and an American Association of Japanese University Women Scholar.