COREY BIRKHOFER

Spring 2005 IDIM graduate with major entitled Filmmaking in a Cultural Context.  His program focused on screenwriting, film production, and film theory. 

WHAT HE'S DOING NOW…

I have been working full-time at a wonderful non-profit located in North Mpls called Asian Media Access where I use the skills gained through my IDIM to teach at-risk youth the benefits of learning to express oneself through media, film and video.  On any given day I find myself working with Ojibwe teens from the St. Paul organization Ain Dah Yung (Our Home) to Hmong youth groups like What About Us? in North Mpls to the International Teen Club in Brooklyn Center.  Though I'm not yet the "big-time" filmmaker I was hoping to be right out of college, I am happy to have a job so related to the skills gained via my IDIM.  Add to that my six years of Japanese study (though I did not earn a degree in it yet) and I'm a perfect fit for Asian Media Access.  It's also not a bad thing that I founded and was president for the University Motion Picture Club at the U of M the year before I graduated because the administrative skills from running the first film production club with a film festival at the end of every semester perfectly meshes with my work at AMA for their theater exhibition series. 

To learn more about Asian Media Access, check out:  www.amamedia.org

I am now preparing to leave for Japan to make a documentary about these mysterious temple bells that were melted down during WWII for the Japanese scrap drive. These ancient bells were unfortunately melted for bullets, bombs and planes that took many lives. However, amazingly, a few of these bells survived, and one of them ended up in Duluth, MN of all places! So I plan to tell the story of how such a bell got to Duluth, and more touching, the story of how it got back to Japan.