Tracey, Yvette Torell, Isayana

In 1984, Yvette Marie Torell began her film career in Boston, working at the Boston Film/Video Foundation as a member of he video art collective Subterranean Video. Her first film Persephone Dream was a festival winner at the San Francisco Video Refuses in 1987.

In 1988, Yvette relocated to San Francisco.  During her pregnancy, she traveled alone to mainland China to make Y Na Na, a film portraying the women of four indigenous groups living in southwest China and Tibet. Y na na was awarded the Best Documentary and Audience Favorite awards at The United States Super 8mm Film Festival in 1999, and it also won an honorable mention at the Smoky Mountain Media Festival in North Carolina in 1994.  In 1994, she co-produced and edited William Stafford and Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship, a film about two of America's most notable poets. Just Mom and Me  was her first feature documentary and took five years to make from 1995 to 1999. 

Her films have been shown nationally and internationally at festivals, media arts centers, and television, including Mill Valley Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, Athens' International Film Festival, Women's Film/Video Festival of Montreal, Taos Talking Pictures, Tahoe International Film Festival, Pacific Northwest Festival of Anthropological and Fictional Film, Venice Biennale, Northwest Film Center,Visual Studies Workshop, Works by Women at Barnard College, ArtVideo Boston,KQED, KRON, KCSM, WGBH, KPBS,New JerseyPublic TV, KTOP-TV, and Free Speech TV.

Recently, Yvette completed a short poetic film entitled Passeggiata filmed in Italy and inspired by the music of Arvo Part.  Currently She is working on a museum installation based on the Sri Lalitha Sahasranama with visual artist Josephine Balakrishnan.

Yvette is the founder of Illumina Films (illuminafilms.com). She currently lives in North Beach with her son, Tristan Abhay, age 15. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College in Mass Media Communications and English Literature.