Hawai‘i-based Kirsten Whatley is a filmmaker and editor, author, and photographer, with a focus on documentary, nature, and dance.
She is currently working with Whale Wise Productions on editing a series of healing films that combine underwater whale footage from French Polynesia with sound therapy. She has also edited dance films for Dancing Camera, a movement film production company in New York, and is currently editing for the Migration Dance Film Project in Montreal. A lifelong dancer herself, she brings a lyrical style to her film work, using light, texture, and sound to give viewers an immersive, sensory experience.
After completing the writing and editing of the short documentary How’s Your Mom for Canadian director/photographer Ann Leese, the film was nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival 2023, and was a semi-finalist for the 2023 Lunenburg Doc Fest. Her own short film You Clapped, Delighted was an Official Selection of the 2021 Maui Film Festival. Her previous short film Let Your Arms Unfurl was featured by the Canada-based Social Distancing Festival in December 2020. Her short piece Reawakening was an Official Selection of the 2021 Hawai‘i Filmmakers Collective 48-Hour Challenge.
Kirsten’s writing credits include Orion, Tin House, AFAR, Saveur, The Washington Post, Honolulu Magazine, Civil Beat, and elsewhere. She has edited over 70 books on culture and counterculture for the Hawai‘i publishers Island Heritage, Inner Ocean, and Bess Press. For 18 years, Kirsten was the director of communications for award-winning nonprofit Ma Ka Hana Ka 'Ike, a community-based vocational training program for Native Hawaiian youth.
Her photojournalism and nature photography have been featured in Orion magazine and Black and White magazine, where she won two Single Image Awards in 2017, including one People's Choice Award. She was also a finalist at the 2017 SIPA (Siena International Photo Award) contest in Italy. Her image of a young Hawaiian hula dancer at the East Maui Taro Festival took 1st place in the 2016 Hāna Festivals of Aloha Photography Competition. She previously had the honor of dancing and performing for 7 years with traditional East Maui hālau hula, Hālau o Nakaulakuhikuhi.
In 2008, Kirsten wrote Preserving Paradise: Opportunities in Volunteering for Hawai‘i's Environment (Island Heritage)—in 2009, it won a merit award for Best Travel Guide from the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA). From 2009–2015, she ran a related environmental outreach organization, Preserve Hawai‘i, then served as consultant to the Hawai‘i Conservation Alliance’s Conservation Connections.
Kirsten has a deep-seated curiosity of other peoples, cultures, and places. It has taken her from Lisbon to Ubud, Papeete to Cusco, Havana to Marrakech. She has studied flamenco in southern Spain, sought after street images in New Orleans, pounded curry paste in the garage of a Thai chef. She is planning her next adventures as you read this.