Julianne Sato-Parker is the founder of Hamako Films. She is a documentary film director and producer based on the US west coast.
Two feature documentaries she’s directed/produced include: “Solving for Zero” (Gates Venture/Wondrium) and Big Dreams in Umatilla (OPB). Her work also includes the docuseries “Storefront Stories” (HBO Max/Magnolia Network); branded docs for clients such as Google, Nike, Lowe’s and Pearson Education; and documentary shorts for TIME Magazine, NBC, TED, and various nonprofits. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and has spent the last three years reporting for and writing a book about the Chinook Indian Nation's fight for federal recognition.
Julianne’s storytelling proclivities were shaped by a background in journalism, over a decade of long term travel and a lifelong commitment to spend time in wild spaces. Her adventures, both personal and professional, formed a simple belief: humans protect what they love and the best way to love something is to experience it. Giving people the opportunity to marvel at the beauty of this wild, spectacular, and complicated world is what she strives to do in her work.
She bounces around between Los Angeles, CA and Portland, OR and is available for assignments worldwide. Please reach out for details, questions, or to say hello!
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Julianne’s storytelling proclivities were shaped by a background in journalism, over a decade of long term travel and a lifelong commitment to spend time in wild spaces. Her adventures, both personal and professional, formed a simple belief: humans protect what they love and the best way to love something is to experience it.
Documenting and sharing human life, in all its nuanced beauty, makes the world feel small enough to relate to one another. She believes this down to her bones. And giving people the opportunity to marvel at the beauty of this wild, spectacular, and complicated world is what she strives to do in her work.
She bounces around between Los Angeles, CA and Portland, OR and is available for assignments worldwide. Please reach out for details, questions, or to say hello!
Director's note: I named Hamako Films after my grandmother. Her name means by the seashore – a tribute to the coastal town in Japan her mother left behind when she immigrated to the US. When WWII began, my grandma changed her name from Hamako to Dorothy, trying to blend into a country that would soon force her and her family from their home and into incarceration camps. In my work as a storyteller, I often find myself drawn to stories about belonging– ones that explore the ways in which people lose, search for, or create a sense of home or identity, especially within circumstances challenging their ability to do so. This has led me to stories about an Indigenous community’s fight for native sovereignty, a high school robotics club uniting a small, rural Oregon community, and the repercussions of climate change on maize farmers in Kenya. For me, the word Hamako evokes a feeling of home as much as it evokes a feeling of loss. It came to represent those parts of ourselves most at risk of being lost and the simple, beautiful humanity found in our desire to belong as we are. It felt like the perfect name to represent the work I strive to create.
Hamako Films is named after my grandmother. Her name means "by the seashore" – a tribute to the coastal town in Japan her mother left behind when she immigrated to the US. When WWII began, my grandma changed her name from Hamako to Dorothy, trying to blend into a country that would soon force her and her family from their home and into incarceration camps. For me, Hamako – by the seashore – evokes a feeling of home as much as it evokes a feeling of loss. It conjures up the soft and soaked landscape of my childhood on the Oregon coast and it reminds me of what’s lost when we value homogeneity over cultural vibrancy. In my work as a storyteller, I often find myself drawn to stories about belonging– ones that explore the ways in which people lose, search for, or create a sense of home or identity, especially within circumstances challenging their ability to do so. This has led me to stories about an Indigenous community’s fight for native sovereignty, a high school robotics club uniting a small, rural Oregon community, and the repercussions of climate change on maize farmers in Kenya. For me, the word Hamako came to represent those parts of ourselves most at risk of being lost and the simple, beautiful humanity found in our desire to belong as we are. It felt like the perfect name to represent the work I strive to create.
