NYU Honors 1999 Oscar Winner Keiko Ibi

1999 Academy Award winner Keiko Ibi received a hero’s welcome today upon her return to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Fresh from her triumph in Hollywood last Sunday, the 32-year-old filmmaker and former beauty queen from Japan was feted at a luncheon salute co-hosted by NYU and HBO.

NYU President L. Jay Oliva, Tisch School of the Arts Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell, HBO Senior Vice President Sheila Nevins, along with teachers, film students and many of the senior citizens who were the subject of her film gathered in the student common room at the Tisch School of the Arts to congratulate Ms. Ibi and get a glimpse of her Oscar. Ms. Ibi received her MFA in film in 1998 from the Tisch School’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television.

“We talk about having the best film program in the country, and today is one of those days when we offer our proof,” said Dr. L. Jay Oliva, President of New York University. “Through her creative spirit and vision, Keiko Ibi has contributed significantly to the distinction of our entire community by her extraordinary achievement. We are enormously proud of her.”

“We are delighted to welcome Keiko back to the Tisch School of the Arts on such an auspicious occasion,” commented Mary Schmidt Campbell, dean of the Tisch School of the Arts. “Six years ago she came to us as an aspiring filmmaker with great promise. Today, she is an Oscar winner with a great career. On behalf of all the students, faculty and staff of the Tisch School I want to extend congratulations and say ‘Come back often.’”

Her winning film, The Personals: Improvisations on Romance in the Golden Years, was Ms. Ibi’s student thesis film. It follows a group of mostly Jewish senior citizens on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as they rehearse and perform an original play about older people looking for romance through the personal ads.

The documentary will debut on the HBO Signature multiplex channel Sunday, April 25 at 8:00 PM EDT.

Born in Tokyo, Keiko Ibi studied Japanese literature at Japan Women’s University. At the age of nineteen she won a beauty competition and was crowned Miss Japan Grand Prix. She studied screenwriting in Japan before moving to New York in 1991. She enrolled at NYU in 1993 and made three short films before she began shooting The Personals in the summer of 1996.

Ms. Ibi is the recipient of NYU’s 1998 Dennis Riese Film Production Award, a $5,000 stipend for post-production work on The Personals. Ms. Ibi completed the film and her MFA in January 1998. Her husband, Greg Pak, director of photography on The Personals, won a 1998 Student Academy Award for his documentary Fighting Grandpa. He also has an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Film Program.

04/11/99