Tony Coolidge

Early life

Coolidge was born in Taipei, Taiwan to a United States Army serviceman whom he never met and Chen Yu-Chu, a woman of Atayal descent. Until the age of three, he grew up in the indigenous village of Wulai, but after his mother married another military serviceman, the family left Taiwan and began living around the world on military bases.

After initially studying pre-med at the University of Texas at Austin, Coolidge graduated with a bachelor's degree in Advertising.

Career

Coolidge began his career as a graphic artist for the University of Texas at Austin and The Daily Texan newspaper, but his mother’s illness prompted him to move to Orlando, Florida in 1996, where he transitioned to Internet marketing and media. He was a partner for Orlando Online, an Internet services company that was one of the pioneers in the industry. During the Internet Boom of the 1990s, Coolidge co-founded iBidUSA.com, a B2C Internet auction company that eventually was publicly traded.

Inspired by training in Landmark Education, Tony founded the volunteer organization Katrina's Angels in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. The city of Orlando recognized Coolidge’s community building efforts by inviting him to become a member of their International Advisory Committee.

After his mother's death, Coolidge returned to Taiwan and for the first time discovered his indigenous heritage. He wrote an article documenting his journey to his mother’s hometown of Wulai that was published in ORIENT Magazine. The article attracted filmmakers Derek Bedini and Aaron Hose, who approached Coolidge about making a documentary about his experience.

In 2001, Coolidge founded ATAYAL, a nonprofit organization to share the cultures of the indigenous tribes of Taiwan. The organization hosted the Indigenous Heritage Festival at the University of Central Florida, which brought together tribal representatives from Taiwan and other parts of the world. Among them was tribal leader Alice Takewatan, who was touched by Coolidge's cultural exchange efforts. At her invitation, Coolidge returned to Taiwan in 2005 to film Voices in the Clouds.

The film premiered at the Aruba Film Festival in June 2010, and went on to screen in over fifteen other film festivals around the world, including the San Diego Asian Film Festival and the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival. Voices in the Clouds has won several awards, including Best International Indigenous Film at the 2012 Wairoa Indigenous Film Festival in New Zealand and the Golden Drum Award at the 2012 Nepal International Indigenous Film Festival in Kathmandu.

Coolidge also produced a short film, Time and Music in a Disappearing World, which was screened in conjunction with an exhibition of photographs taken during the filming of Voices in the Clouds. The exhibition traveled throughout Florida and Taiwan from 2005-2010, raising funds that were donated to the tribal elders who were the subjects of the documentary.

In 2011, Coolidge began working on Beyond Hawaiki, a documentary film about the experiences of a group of Māori students who are selected to participate in a cultural exchange program to Taiwan.

Personal life

Coolidge is married to Shu-min Coolidge and has three sons.