Kenneth Kokin
Kenneth Kokin has been a producer for many first time feature directors. He is also sworn deputy in state of Georgia.
The debut feature film he produced for Bryan Singer, Public Access won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Ken Kokin and Singer developed a script with writer Christopher McQuarrie to produce the multi-Academy Award winning film The Usual Suspects which Kokin directed the substantial second-unit and co-produced. This achievement landed Kokin on the cover of Fade In Magazine as one of “The 100 People to Know in Hollywood”.
Kokin spent the next several years dividing his time between working with new film makers and developing a screenplay on the life of Alexander the Great, written with Peter Buchman and McQuarrie, for Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. (Scorsese and DiCaprio chose to do The Aviator first, making way for Oliver Stone to produce his version of Alexander.)
Next, he produced and directed second-unit on McQuarrie’s directorial first feature, The Way of the Gun starring Juliette Lewis, Ryan Phillippe, James Caan and Oscar winner Benicio del Toro.
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival marks Kenneth Kokin’s next statements in cinema with Captain Abu Raed the Audience Award Winner in festival’s World Dramatic Competition. This is not only the first independent film produced in Kingdom of Jordan but it’s the fist feature film from recent AFI graduate Amin Matalqa. 2008 is also the year where For Tomorrow the documentary that Kokin produced and directed in Argentina which was an official selection for the Tribeca Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival where he won the Humanitarian Vision Award. This groundbreaking documentary premiered in 10 film festivals and won many other awards and created awareness about cause of Toms shoes assisting the company in achieve recognition as the fastest growing shoe company in the world.
Kenneth Kokin’s dedication to directing started at 14 when he started making his own films with a borrowed Super-8 camera. In high school, he directed several claymation, live action shorts and documentaries on 16mm. His most ambitious teenage endeavor was a re-creation of the Civil War Battle of Bull Run where he combined animated clay figures and actors to win the Newbridge Reel Award for Best Picture.
Upon graduating from University of Southern California Cinema, Kokin joined the Editor’s Guild and worked at both NBC and Amblin Entertainment. CBS hired Kokin to shoot, edit and direct the behind the scenes for the longest-running annual special, Circus of the Stars where he worked with lions, tigers, motorcycle, stunts, high-wire and trapeze acts.
Having a passion for all elements of filmmaking from pre-production through production and post-production, Kokin chose producing and directing because they are the only jobs where he has the opportunity to participate in all areas of the process.
Recently, Kokin has produced a Chinese-America co-production in Chengdu, China starring John Robinson http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1440281/ and Xiaolu Li http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0523735/.
Back in two thousand and eight, he traveled South America, Haiti and Africa directing documentaries about the pandemic of poverty and HIV facing children in those regions.
Staying true to his roots in the crime genre Kenneth Kokin wrote the feature about the famous mobster, James "Whitey" Bulger. The Los Angeles Time[1] piece June 26, 2012 quoted Kokin to say, "Finding out that Whitey Bulger was living in Santa Monica just three blocks away from me was a little like looking frantically for your sunglasses only to find out they were on your head the whole time."
Kokin's passion for documentaries continues as he is currently working on a feature about sea mammals as well as working as a producer in reality television.