Stella M. Holmes
STELLA HOLMES is a Miami-based documentary filmmaker with a passion for bridging the gap between different cultures through artistic encounters, with the aim of promoting awareness and respect as modes of greater tolerance and more positive interchange in a globalized age.
Her debut documentary, West Encounters East, has been aired on more than 280 public television channels across the United States, and was also screened as an official selection of several film festivals. The first of the West Encounters East series, it won a Gold International Movie Award and a Silver Telly Award in 2014, and Ms. Holmes received the 2014 Brazilian International Press Award, Cinema and Video category. The Fragility of Tradition, the second film in the West Encounters East series, is now in production.
A Journey to the Soul of Guna Yala, which documents the encounter between a group of students in the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami’s innovative ArtLab museum studies program and the indigenous Guna people of Panama’s remote San Blas islands, is scheduled to debut this year on WPBT2, South Florida’s premier public television channel.
Formally educated as an art historian, Ms. Holmes also curates art exhibitions. Recent examples include Brickell Urban Encounters. Manuel Carbonell-Yutaka Toyota: Two Master Sculptors. Two Disciplines, the second exhibition in the inaugural season of the Banco do Brasil Cultural Series; The Crossroads where West Encounters East, an exhibition at Brazil Art Fair during Miami Art Week; and Tanabata: Japan’s Star Festival –Views of Tanabata in São Paulo, Brazil, featuring photography by Jade Matarazzo, at Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, Florida.
She combined her curatorial and cinematic expertise to produce and direct a promotional video for Contemporary Kōgei Styles in Japan, an exhibition at Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach organized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Consulate General of Japan, Miami, and Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens.
In Miami, where she has lived for several decades, Ms. Holmes is well-known for her philanthropy.