Local karate dojo films to be shown at Action on Film Megafest
By LORI ABBOTTS Daily News Staff Jul 11, 2021
St. Thomas’ Shen Dragon Karate Dojo is about to hit the big screen at the Action on Film Megafest in Las Vegas.
The Megafest incorporates multiple events into one massive show, with more than 15 film festival competitions where filmmakers and writers can showcase their work in top-of-the-line theaters. Shen Dragon’s short-action film “Black Feather” has been named an official selection for five of those festivals.
Additionally, their short Bushido Tea Ceremony documentary has been chosen by The Most Important Films Festival, so the dojo will have a total of six separate theaters screening the films throughout the Megafest, to be held July 26 through Aug 1. It is a chance to highlight not just the St. Thomas dojo, but also the Virgin Islands as a tourism and filmmaking destination.
The four-minute, 18-second short-short “single technique” film featuring Otto and student Rashell Machuca was filmed and directed in three days by William Torillo of Mango Media, who is an adult student at the dojo. The story is about a young girl, played by Rashell, witnessing a crime being committed and is pursued by the criminals but defeats them using the Black Feather technique taught to her by Master Otto.
“The martial arts that she applies is absolutely big screen quality,” said Otto. “She is just phenomenal. She’s going to be a martial arts phenomenon.”
Rashell, 12, who has been studying martial arts since she was nine, is already a junior black belt in karate. She trains at the dojo three times a week.
“At first I just wanted to try it out to see how it was,” Rashell said. “I wanted to do it like a sport and then I realized that it’s not a sport, that it could change my career.”
Making the film was more for fun than any serious competitiveness, though Otto himself has seen his share of competitions.
He began studying martial arts in 1965. He was named to the Professional Karate League’s Black Belt Hall of Fame as the Senior Competitor of the Year and has won several titles. In 1989, he finished the season as the Undefeated Champion in two divisions — Forms and Weapons — in the Professional Karate League.
More recently, in 2020, Otto was promoted to ku dan, or ninth-degree black belt.
Otto opened his first dojo in Phillipsburg, N.J., in 1981, and after moving to St. Croix in 1991, he opened a dojo there. After traveling with his “day job” in construction project management, he settled on St. Thomas, and in 2017, Otto, with his wife Celine and son Bryan opened the Shen Dragon Karate Dojo on the Antilles School campus, where Celine Otto was teaching. Although hurricanes Irma and Maria closed the dojo two months later, they reopened in January 2018, and by the end of the year, the dojo had outgrown its space and moved to Buccaneer Mall.
Celine Otto, now a first-degree black belt, is the primary instructor for the children’s classes. The dojo also offers adult karate and self-defense courses. It was named the 2019 Martial Arts School of the Year by the American Martial Arts Alliance and has approximately 130 students.
Otto recently formed a nonprofit organization, the Virgin Islands Martial Arts Development Association, to provide educational and scholarship opportunities for kids who could not normally come to the dojo. He also hopes to integrate a martial arts program into the physical fitness curriculum in local elementary schools.
Through the nonprofit group, Otto also hopes to work with police departments to provide training and with women’s groups and corporate groups to teach self-defense.
Don’t expect “Black Feather” to be his final film. Another project on the books is producing a mini-series that “ties in some of the social good things and some of the social ills and bring it to peoples’ attention, have them become more aware of that, and have the martial arts as kind of an action background to that.”
Martial arts, Otto explains, is not just about physical fitness. The training instills confidence, respect, humility and manners, and turns negativity into positive energy.
“Our program is about positive reinforcement,” he said. “We are helping to develop the belief system of children because of the negativity all around them. When a child has a negative experience, unless that’s corrected to positive, it’s like a loop. It loops through them forever, so what we do through our positive initiatives is help the positive side of your belief system. It’s about love and compassion and the martial arts.
“Yes, our martial arts are effective, but it’s not used for any purpose other than defending yourself. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, to have these kids understand, and really respect each other and care for each other. As they grow in life, they carry that same loving feeling.”