Aaron Woolfolk

Aaron Woolfolk was born and raised in Oakland, California. He received degrees in both Ethnic Studies and Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. After teaching English in rural Japan (in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku), he returned to the United States and moved to New York City, where he received his M.F.A. in Film from Columbia University. For his first film "Rage!" Aaron won a Directors Guild of America award. His films "Eki" and "Kuroi Hitsuji" won several awards, screened in international film festivals, and played on cable television. Based on an early draft of his screenplay "The Harimaya Bridge," Aaron received a Walt Disney Studios/ABC Entertainment Talent Development Grant. He later became a Walt Disney Studios/ABC Entertainment Writing Fellow. With the production of "The Harimaya Bridge" in the summer of 2008, Aaron became the first African-American to shoot a feature film in Japan. The movie opened in theaters nationwide in Japan in the summer of 2009 and received rave reviews. Aaron's first play, "Bronzeville" (co-written with Timothy Toyama), premiered at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in the spring of 2009 to rave reviews.