Jeff Chiba Stearns is a Canadian independent animation and documentary filmmaker who works in traditional and computer-based techniques.
was created on a pre-license fee from the CBC and explores issues of growing up half-Japanese and half-Caucasian in a small Canadian town.
[1] For the festival, he curates, Mixed Flicks, a showcase of films made by multiethnic filmmakers and panel with mixed-race actors and media makers.
Yellow Sticky Notes was nominated for a 2012 Emmy® Award for Best Human Interest Feature/Segment after it aired as part of the KCTS program Reel Northwest.
One Big Hapa Family has also screened at many North American universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell.
Chiba Stearns' second feature-length documentary, Mixed Match (2016), explores the complexities multiethnic people with rare blood diseases face when trying to find bone marrow donors.
Chiba Stearns collaborated with Sansei artist Lillian Michiko Blakey to co-write and illustrate the graphic novel, On Being Yukiko, released in January 2021.
Chiba Stearns was the creative director and directed over 60 episodes of the hit pre-school television series, The Treebees, which has amassed millions of views on YouTube.