Maui’s newest Film Commissioner Brian Kohne is an award-winning motion picture writer/director/producer (Get A Job, Kuleana), music producer (Barefoot Natives, Willie K, Eric Gilliom), and playwright (White Hawaiian) whose family moved to Maui from Detroit, Michigan in 1969. As a five-year old in his first week on island, he visited the set of Michener’s The Hawaiians starring Charlton Heston and Geraldine Chaplin, which set in motion a deep-seated interest in the movies. 

An ’82 Baldwin High graduate and Art and Radio/TV/Film alumnus of San Jose State, he returned to Maui in ’05 from Silicon Valley, having excelled as a national director of sales and marketing, a senior user interface architect for an interactive television corporation, in sports broadcasting, and corporate video production. Kohne is a tenured associate professor who established the Academy for Creative Media at University of Hawaii Maui College, where he works directly with graduates and also teaches Comedy, Screenwriting, and Storytelling. Among the first from the island to play soccer in college, he is focused on infrastructure, workforce development, education, and creating unique opportunities for island creatives while establishing Maui as the premier location for independent production in the Pacific.