KYLE A. SANTORO

A senior at Los Gatos High School, Kyle is a creative imagemaker from the Bay Area. Growing up in Taiwan in a family of artists, with a dad who was a stage director and world music producer, he saw large scale global music productions from the other side, backstage in the wings of stages in San Francisco, Taiwan, and China. As a biracial teen, Kyle already sees and embodies two completely different worlds – one in English, the other in Chinese. “I see things neither side sees,” he admits. “Both sides really do not cross, but I do cross because I grew up in Taiwan and the US. And that’s what I want to share with the world -- these fascinating insider stories.” Kyle uses filmmaking to tie together “worlds” that often do not cross, putting raw energy that viewers can feel into his shots.

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Kyle’s passion for filmmaking ignited in July 2021 when he filmed a 2 minute short about the homeless on the back streets and hidden alleys of San Francisco. “I loved how I was showing the little known perspectives,” he said, “the parts that people often ignore and try to stay away from because they are afraid to solve that problem.”  Within months, he was getting calls to shoot and edit sports reels for high school and collegiate athletes and sports tournaments all over the Bay Area, from football, basketball, volleyball to lacrosse, field hockey, water polo, swimming and baseball.

 

By mid-sophomore year, Kyle started his own film production company, LC2 Productions.  Since then, Kyle has been commissioned to shoot the “MOSAIC DEI Curriculum Series” for the entire student body designed by LGHS teachers for his high school, the annual LGHS Lip Dub music video, PSAs for local nonprofits like AWO’s “Stories in Schools”, Santa Clara County Fire Department’s “Do Your Part”, Polynesian high school football linemen, an eBike Safety Campaign video for the Los Gatos Police Department and Town of Los Gatos, and a baseball film short about San Jose migrant youth. He recently premiered his Fentanyl High documentary at the CineLux Los Gatos Theatre to a sold-out audience and is setting up screenings for the film in school districts throughout the Bay Area.

 

Interacting with so many different kinds of people, including the diverse communities in the Bay Area, now makes him fascinated by cultural anthropology, a field he hopes to study in college.