Yoram Savion

His pan-genre, award-winning onscreen work spans movement-based documentation, narrative, documentary for youth- and humanitarian-centric initiatives including Youth Speaks, Destiny Arts, and 14+ Foundation (Zambia), and creative work for multinational brands. Savion’s creative work spans brands including Apple, Red Bull, Sundance Film Festival, Adidas, Adobe, DJI, the City of Oakland, Everyday People, and Electrafrique. 

Savion is co-founder of Oakland, CA based YAK Films, an international media company that is a pioneer of innovative filming techniques for street dance. Over the past decade, Savion and his co-founders (Kash Gaines & Benjamin Tarquin) have built the YAK brand into a household name by filming legendary dance artists such as Les Twins, Lil Buck, Bones the Machine, and Lil Kida in diverse street landscapes across the US, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. Their work is widely distributed via digital media channels including their own outlets: YAK’s YouTube channels have more than one million subscribers and have garnered nearly half a billion views.

Originally from Bretagne, France, Savion grew up in Oakland and has developed deep roots in his East Bay community, dedicating his time at home to a number of community initiatives including Youth UpRising, the Turf Feinz dance crew, Art + Soul, and Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, where he teaches multimedia production to up and coming dancers, musicians, and martial artists. He recently directed Dear Black Girls (commissioned by the San Francisco Dance Film Festival) and Ride Out To Vote; both feature prominent WOC activists from the East Bay. 

In 2019 Savion partnered with Sozo Media to create a short film trilogy in conjunction with the evening-length performance The Just and The Blind, which premiered at Carnegie Hall to a sold out audience. Under Savion’s direction, the films have been met with critical acclaim worldwide and continue to screen widely in the US, Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. The first two films in the trilogy are both award-winning and premiered at Lincoln Center (NY) and The Kennedy Center (DC), respectively; FEAR was added to the permanent collection at the National Library of Jamaica in February 2020. The final installment of the trilogy FREE will be released in 2021.