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AMERICAN PASTIME Screening

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American Pastime

Free and open screening of AMERICAN PASTIME in San Francisco!

Saturday, November 17, 2007, 2:00 p.m
Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC)
1840 Sutter St., in between Webster and Buchanan in Japantown

American Pastime takes viewers into the lives of the Japanese American community at a time when their very foundations were shaken to the core. Adding elements of humor, romance and action, the film is based on the true events of World War II’s U.S. home front, where nearly a quarter of a million Japanese Americans, though citizens of this country, were uprooted from their homes and placed in remote internment camps because of a perceived security threat. The film’s story centers around one family in Utah’s Topaz camp where the interned community ironically uses baseball, for decades a part of the Japanese American fabric, as a way to rise above their daily hardships and adversity.

Q & A with Kerry Nakagawa to follow.

Special pre-order DVD pricing: $13 JCCCNC members/$15 general/$16 at event.

Call 415-567-5505 or email programsevents@jcccnc.org to reserve a seat or to pre-order a DVD.

For more information about American Pastime, click here.


Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014)

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We recently learned about the passing of civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama. Kochiyama is perhaps most known for being at the scene during the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. When Malcolm X was shot, Kochiyama cradled the dying civil rights hero in her arms, a moment captured by LIFE magazine. But Kochiyama was also so much more.

Mary Yuriko Nakahara was born in 1921 and grew up  in San Pedro, California. She and her family members were uprooted during WWII and incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas. This experience during the war, along with over 100,000 other Japanese Americans, led Kochiyama on a path toward seeking freedom and justice for many marginalized communities.

After the war, Kochiyama moved to Harlem, where she lived for about 40 years with her husband Bill. Together, they had six children. They lived in a housing project alongside many Puerto Rican and black families. There, she became involved in the Harlem Parents Committee and advocated for safe schools, safer streets and union jobs for people of color.

“The movement is contagious, and the people in it are the ones who pass on the spirit.” -Yuri Kochiyama, Yuri Kochiyama: A Passion for Justice (1993).

She met Malcolm X in 1963, when she in her 40’s, and described him as her biggest political influence. She became a member of his organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm X also wrote the family many postcards during his travels. While I was a reporter at the Oakland Tribune, she told me that her family hosted a group of hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The person they wanted to meet the most was Malcolm X, and he showed up at the Kochiyama house later to see everyone.

In later years, Kochiyama fought for the rights of political prisoners, for Puerto Rican independence and for nuclear disarmament. In 1977, she was one of the people arrested after taking over the Statue of Liberty along with other Puerto Rico independence activists. She and her husband also fought for reparations for Japanese American internees through the Civil Liberties Act, which was signed into law in 1988. She was also staunchly anti-war and supported immigrant rights.

Kochiyama moved to the East Bay later in life to be closer to her children. When I visited one of her places in Oakland, her walls were covered with political posters such as “Free Mumia” and her bed was also covered—with stuffed animals. She kept an album of photos and postcards of Malcolm X, but also many other things—letters that she would write, many with political prisoners who she corresponded with for decades. Whenever someone would visit her, she also asked them to sign their names in a book that she kept.

As an elder and inspiration to many in the younger generations, she took a keen interest in young peoples’ lives. Some note that instead of talking about her life, she often asked the young people what they were doing.

She recently turned 93 on May 19, a birthday she shares with Malcolm X. Her memory and spirit live in with the many people she has met and inspired.

Yuri Kochiyama is survived by her living children—Audee, Eddie, Jimmy and Tommy; grandchildren—Zulu, Akemi, Herb, Ryan, Traci, Maya, Aliya, Christopher, and Kahlil; and great-grandchildren—Kai, Leilani, Kenji, Malia and Julia.

– Momo Chang.

Hardeep Jandu and Brian Ignacio contributed to this post. A new Tumblr page, “because of yuri,” has been created for people to share memories and reflections about Yuri Kochiyama.

Main image: Movie still from Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1993), a documentary by Rea Tajiri and Pat Saunders.

Yuri Kochiyama’s Words of Wisdom

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The late civil rights activist, Japanese American Yuri Kochiyama, is the subject of Rea Tajiri’s Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1993). The documentary screens Thursday, September 4 at 7 p.m. at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. The screening is free. Please RSVP at PublicPrograms@JAMsj.org. There are also two upcoming public memorials for Yuri Kochiyama in New York and Los Angeles. See below for details.

Hear from Yuri Kochiyama herself – here are a few of her quotes from the documentary. In addition, we have an essay by NY-based musician, writer and educator Taiyo Na.

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On people of color uniting:

“My priority would be to fight against polarization. Because this whole society is so polarized. I think there are so many issues that all people of color should come together on, and there are forces in this country who want this polarziation to take place.”

On knowing our histories:
“Unless we know ourselves and our history, and other people and their history, there is really no way that we can really have positive kind of interaction where there is real understanding.”
Kochiyama became politicized in her 20s:
“Political philosophy is not just something you obtain, it’s something that you develop through your lifetime. And of course, as different events happen to you and different people you meet and writings that you read, your philsophy is going to change.”
Kochiyama’s father was detained and interrogated during WWII and died just after he was released. This began the politicization of Yuri Kochiyama, who later became involved with many grassroots and civil rights groups, including befriending Malcolm X:

“Remembering what happened, not to my happened to my father, but to Japanese as a whole, I see similiar things that happened to other ethnics. Years later, I would see that these kind of things happened to others all along, all the time, especially to blacks.”

More about the film:

Yuri Kochiyama’s story begins with her internment as a young woman during World War II and her gradual political awakening. A follower and friend of Malcolm X and a supporter of Black Liberation, Kochiyama was at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem when Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. She has been involved with worldwide nuclear disarmament, the Japanese American Redress and Reparations Movement and the International Political Prisoner Rights Movement. Through the astonishing breadth of her activities, Kochiyama has united people who otherwise might not have met. A typical yet significant example was when she initiated a meeting between Malcolm X and the Hiroshima Nagasaki Peace Study Mission from Japan. This event kindled her close friendship with Malcolm X that would endure until his death.

Through interviews, writings, music and archival footage, this film captures the extraordinary vitality and compassion of Yuri Kochiyama as a Harlem-based activist, wife, mother of six children, educator and humanitarian. Her accomplishments and continuing involvement offer a unique view of past struggles in human rights and an inspiring glimpse at possibilities for the future.

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Yuri, Tupac, and a Harlem House
By Taiyo Na
Originally posted at Hyphen

Yuri Kochiyama painting by Sahra Vang Nguyen.

Yuri Kochiyama painting by Sahra Vang Nguyen.

One of my favorite stories about Yuri is also about Tupac. In an event curated by the late Fred Ho in celebration of Diane Fujino’s 2005 book release of the biography Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, Laura Whitehorn spoke of the activist harbor that was the Kochiyama house. Dubbed “Grand Central Station” or the “Revolutionary Salon,” this Harlem apartment and Kochiyama family residence was a hub for activists, artists, students and other community members for much of the last four decades of the 20th century. Whitehorn recalled a then 9-year-old Tupac Shakur speaking eloquently and passionately about the need to free political prisoners at a meeting in Yuri’s house. This 9-year-old Tupac was, of course, not just talking about abstract historical figures, but members of his own family — his stepfather Mutulu Shakur, his godfather Geronimo Pratt, Sundiata Acoli, Sekou Odinga, and others.

That image of Pac as a child speaking about the struggle to free his politically imprisoned family members at Yuri’s house was something very moving to me. It spoke of the insurmountable courage of Pac’s childhood, and it spoke of the prodigious compassion of Yuri and the Kochiyamas to continually share their space. It also embodied the interconnectedness of our struggles. Because if a Japanese American woman such as Yuri and Malcolm X were a hard pairing for people to imagine, then undoubtedly in public imagination Yuri and THUG LIFE are too; and what people don’t understand about Yuri reveals exactly how much we don’t understand about social movements.

Yuri and Pac’s families were profound friends, comrades in intense post-Malcolm struggles for Black and Third World Liberation. Trace the lineages, and one can see how the legacies of both families and their communities catalyzed movements that transformed the nation and world twice over. Whitehorn’s snapshot of Yuri and Pac was like listening to “Free the Land” by Chris Iijima, Nobuko Miyamoto, and Charlie Chin on the A Grain of Sand album. Pac’s stepfather Mutulu Shakur is literally singing there with them on that record, and they are collectively singing the ethos of Malcolm’s call for the self-determination of all oppressed people.

Whitehorn’s brief story here also illustrated how these are struggles political and personal. Pac often talked about how Movement radicalism left women like his own mother raising families on their own while the men in the family were incarcerated, assassinated or absent. Pac’s politicization as a child was parallel to the immense trauma and loss he must have felt as a child of war under siege by the FBI’s COINTELPRO. This is not unlike Yuri’s own experiences during World War II, how just prior to her family’s forced removal to a concentration camp, her own father, a leader in the Japanese American community in San Pedro, CA, was illegally detained, interrogated and denied medical care by the FBI for six weeks and died the day after he was released.

Yuri and Pac both turned their pain into power.

Through the usage of informants and anonymous letters, COINTELPRO FBI agents created friction in the Movement through fiction. Yuri, however, never wavered. She was “the person,” as Angela Davis described in tribute, “who can really change the world.” “This is the person we all need to emulate. We need to emulate her because she knows that the most important work is in the details, in the small things, in the letters, in the words exchanged between us, in the smiles, in the love.” Yuri combated polarization with inclusiveness. She was the safe space. Yuri’s ability to sustain positive relationships amongst Movement activists across generations must be seen as resistance against oppression in the highest of forms. Indeed, she was her own rose that grew from concrete — or concentration camp. And best of all, she planted and helped blossom many, many more.

As we continue to memorialize Yuri, it is vital to not see her as a flash in the pan, but water in a neverending river for justice. For the next generations especially, to connect the dots between Kendrick Lamar, Pac, Malcolm and Yuri. She herself would have made the transnational political connections occurring in today’s world from Gaza to Ferguson, generationally between Emmett Till to Mike Brown, Vincent Chin to Renisha McBride; Mumia to Snowden; White supremacy and imperialism to neoliberalism.

The spirit of Yuri is in our interconnectedness. Yuri Kochiyama, eternally, presente.

UPCOMING MEMORIALS FOR YURI KOCHIYAMA:

LOS ANGELES

August 31, 2014 (Sunday)

2:00 – 4:30 pm

Aratani/ Japan America Theatre

244 South San Pedro Street (bet. 2nd & 3rd Sts.)

Los Angeles, CA 90012

NEW YORK

September 27, 2014 (Saturday)

5:00 – 7:30 pm

First Corinthian Baptist Church

1912 Adam C. Powell Boulevard

New York, NY 10026

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Taiyo Na is musician, writer, and educator from New York City. When he was an awkward 19-year-old, Yuri generously remarked with a smile how his poetry was “firebrand.”

Memories to Light: Meet the Tachibanas

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It’s been two years since we started the Memories to Light project in an effort to preserve and celebrate Asian American home movies and an Asian American history. Memories to Light is now home to over 14 hours of footage from 17 different families, covering a period from the early 1930s to as recent as 1998. The archive also consists of many different ethnicities—Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and Thai to name a few—and take place in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Switzerland, India, and Hawaii. In our ongoing cultivation of an archive of Asian American home movies, we are always finding, digitizing, cataloguing, and publishing footage from new families. One of these new families includes the Tachibanas, and we’ve been working with them to create their own space in the Memories to Light collection.

The footage, donated by Gavin Tachibana, is a collection of Super 8 films from 1976 to 1983. Gavin, as a toddler and as a young child, is featured with his parents Mason and Florence. Gavin’s grandfather, Masao, and other family members also make an appearance. Locations include Gavin’s childhood home and Wilson Park in Torrance, CA, and Windward Mall in Kaneohe, Oahu. There is also footage of a Tahitian dance performance at the Polynesian Cultural Center and a dolphin show at Sea Life Park, both in Kaneohe.

Gavin first contacted us after following a link to the Memories to Light page at CAAMedia.org. He then told us that he had 25 reels of Super 8 film, and he asked us what footage we would like to include in our collection. We chose to focus on the reels that had footage of Hawaii, and on Gavin’s early foray into basketball and baseball.

After digitizing the footage, we watched everything. We invited Gavin to come in and view the footage with us. We typically ask the donor or the donor’s families to view the footage with us and help us identify any people, places, or times that are featured in the home movies.

We sat down with Gavin to talk about the footage and his memories of growing up in Torrance, CA, and visiting his mother’s family in Kaneohe. This was the first time that Gavin could recall seeing the footage. Find out some surprising memories that the home movies sparked, and what Gavin has to say.

Every summer, Gavin would go to Kaneohe to visit his mother’s family. His mom, Florence, and her siblings Lillian and Edgar, would reconnect in the summers to go swimming and visit with each other and their father and stepmother. They would visit Kailua Beach, Sea Life Park, Windward Mall, and Lillian and Edgar’s homes. This was also an opportunity for Gavin to spend time with his grandfather, Masao. In the following video, Gavin speaks about his relationship with his grandfather.

“To see [my grandfather] like this, when I’m this young, and he’s walking around and able to carry me—I just don’t have any memory of that. And to see it is just really striking.” 

Masao Torigoe, Gavin’s grandfather, was born on Dec. 23, 1900 in Hilo, Hawaii.

“He put himself through college in Illinoishe got an engineering degree there. And then he came back to Hawaii, and he held a variety of jobs, from being a baker to being a policeman. It was rural Hawaii, on the big island, so I guess he could do that and hold different jobs. His wife, who was the mother of my mom and her two siblings, passed away when they were children. Then he remarried later, so that’s the grandma that I know. I don’t know that I see her in any of these movies so I wonder about that. He was big on education so he sent all of his three kids to the Midwest for college. So my mom was in Iowa for college, which was pretty rare for an Asian American at that time. [My parents] met in Los Angeles, so after she graduated she came to California. That’s where [my dad]’s from, in Los Angeles.” – Gavin Tachibana

“It’s just interesting, because my kids will have so much digital footage of their interaction with my parents, and on an ongoing basis they’ll have these memories. So it’s unusual to think that something from 35 years ago could just go out of my mind if I don’t see it or think about it. And then I can just come back and see it like this. I think it’s a totally different experience than my kids will have.”

If you or your family would like to digitize and archive your home movies, please fill out an application form. Questions? Email us at: memoriestolight@caamedia.org. We’re always looking for more films to add to the archive.

– Jasmine Lee Ehrhardt

 

Reflections on Yuri Kochiyama

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Yuri Kochiyama tribute video made by Tadashi Nakamura for Yuri Kochiyama memorials in the Oakland, Los Angeles and New York.

“Yuri remembered everyone’s name. She was like that. That’s Yuri. She never forgot your name, and once she learned it, she would ask for you,” remembered Rose, one of Yuri Kochiyama’s lifelong friends at the Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice screening at CAAMFest San Jose. The room was full. Seats were packed with Yuri’s family, friends, inspired activists, and students—all coming together to remember her legacy and enduring spirit.

As I sat in the back corner, I thought about how the documentary was such a brief snapshot into the incredible lifetime of Yuri. The film was completed in 1994. Even twenty years after its completion, she was actively organizing and rallying. Watching the documentary, Yuri’s tireless resistance and advocacy seemed almost mythical. Almost mythical, but at the same time—very real. From the years in her childhood within Japanese internment camps through her fierce involvement with liberation movements later in her life, Yuri Kochiyama worked tirelessly as an advocate and voice for human rights, inspiring generations and impacting multiple communities.

However, it was clear that Yuri’s memory stretched beyond just the accomplishments of her political activism. As community members reflected on her presence in their lives, they spoke with me about the skillful way she would knit connections together. Speaking with young people, writing letters, and forming friendships were all ways that Yuri built her life around her political ideals. Folks spoke on Yuri’s dedication to communicating between individuals—even if it was as seemingly simple as remembering their names. Another friend shared within the group discussion, “She was just an amazing woman. Just an amazing woman. So grounded, and so approachable, that you felt like you could just go up and talk to her. And she remembered you. She would ask you your name, write it down, and remember you. The next time she saw you, she would remember you.” 

Yuri’s political visions have inspired many young people over the years. Her keystone role within the Black Power and Asian American civil rights struggles was pivotal in understanding solidarity from a significant ideological and cultural lens. The well-known track by The Blue Scholars “Yuri Kochiyama” was part of the student activist musical landscape, played at conferences and protests. As Geo would lyricize on the hook, When I grow up I want to be like Yuri Kochiyama/And if she ever hear this it’s an honor/’Cause when I grow up I wanna be just like Yuri Kochiyama, my mind would drift to the iconic images of Yuri, screen-printed on T-shirts and posters. After the film screening and talking with a few of her friends, it was important to reflect on her intimate influence as well, as a mother, community member, and dear friend.

Thank you, Yuri. Thank you.

-Hardeep Jandu

Main image (on homepage): Friends of Yuri Kochiyama attend the CAAMFest San Jose screening of Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice by Rea Tajiri (1994). Photo by Diana Li.

Help Us Find Families of Lost Home Movie Reels

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While most of the footage in the Memories to Light archive is brought to us by friends of CAAM or families looking to archive their home movies, we’ll occasionally receive footage from other sources. The San Francisco Media Archive, Premiere Pictures International, Inc, and StoryCorps staff have all generously donated footage to Memories to Light. These “orphan films” that we have in our archive lack the context or family detail that the other films do have—there aren’t any names, dates, or locations written on the reels, making it much harder for us to identify the subjects of the home movie.

One of the “orphan films” in our collection was brought to us by film preservationist Ron Merk. It features a Japanese American family living in San Francisco in 1939. Originally found on a reel of 16mm Kodachrome, Merk shared the footage with us, and we are now looking for the family featured in the video. The film begins with a panning shot of a large family, young and old, gathered in a living room, facing the camera and preparing to take a picture. The camera pans again and we see that there is much laughter and joy in this house. The film also features the family taking a walk together through the Elephant Towers on Treasure Island at the 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exposition, and there seems to be a large number of family members featured. Later, we see the family having Christmas dinner and opening presents together.  There is also a part of the film that shows the main family shaking hands with a long line of people. Throughout the home movie, the recorder pans back and forth across their family to include as many people in the frame as possible.

The film could have been misplaced or lost during the incarceration of Japanese Americans, as many people were displaced, losing their homes and many of their possessions.

“[The film]’s in perfect condition,” Merk wrote. “We look at the information that comes from the seller or donor. In this case, all we had was that this was a San Francisco-based Japanese family in 1939. We then looked at the film can for markings. There were none. The film, itself, offered only one clue—the year the film stock was made. On the edge of most film stocks are little symbols, and these told us the year was 1939. We also look for names or signs or little title cards in the film, that might help in identifying who is in the film. In this case, there were none. So, what we have is a mystery to solve. This is why we brought the film to CAAM, to see if there was some means of reaching out to the community to find the family whose descendants might want to be re-united with these memories. The film was shown last September 26th at a CAAM show and exhibit at the Asian Art Museum. We posted some photos and contact information in one of the galleries, but to date, we have not found the family.”

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Screenshots from the lost reel, circa 1939 in San Francisco.

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Families become separated from their footage in many different ways, whether it happens after the passing of a family member, or through a moving or garage sale, or if they are just thrown away. And that’s not all, according to Merk. “There’s the whole myth of saving them by digitizing them. People take their films to Costco or some transfer service, make DVDs and then dispose of the film….The films, if properly preserved in a temperature and humidity controlled vault, should last 100 years or more.  We have that much history with film, and that’s the basis of that assumption. So, if people want to ‘get rid of those old films’ because it’s too hard to project them, or they don’t want them any more, they need to make some attempt to get them to a professional archive and ask for help.” (Read the full Q&A with Ron Merk here).

What makes these home movies significant is not only that they are a visual representation of “life as it was,” but that their specific stories are moving and intimate. It’s our mission to reunite these families and their footage, as well as using each family’s stories to build a deeper understanding of an Asian American history.

If you recognize any of the people in either of these films, let us know! Email us at memoriestolight@caamedia.org.

If you or your family would like to digitize and archive your home movies, please fill out an application form here. If you have unidentified footage in your possession, let us know and we’d be happy to work with you to digitize and identify it. We’re always looking for more films to be added to the archive.

Jasmine Lee Ehrhardt

JOIN US for Holiday Home Movie Day Saturday, December 6 in Oakland, CA.

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HOLIDAY HOME MOVIE DAY (FREE)
December 6, 2014
Temescal Arts Center
511 48th street, Oakland, CA 94609

This holiday season share the gift of home movie memories! Warm up by the light of the projectors! Bring your family and friends to Home Movie Day, an annual event that is celebrated all over the world to share and learn how to preserve your home movies.

Co-organized with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Pamela Vadakan and Antonella Bonfanti, we will have an open screening of *your* small gauge home movies on the big screen, followed by a holiday party and montage of Asian American holiday home movie treasures from CAAM’s “Memories to Light” collection. The event features musical act Mano Dio Gracias and Jesse Micek of The Wildlife and is free for the public.

SCHEDULE
2pm-3pm Film check in
3pm-5pm Open screening – see your home movie on the big screen!
5pm-6pm Holiday drinks & treats
6pm Center for Asian American Media presents Asian American holiday home movies from the Memories to Light collection

FILM SUBMISSIONS
Submit your films early! We are accepting submissions at the CAAM offices in San Francisco or UC Berkeley Library in the East Bay, Monday through Thursday, 11am-5pm. Email Davin Agatep (dagatep@caamedia.org) for SF drop-offs and Pamela Vadakan (pamelajean@berkeley.edu) for East Bay drop-offs.

On December 6th, bring your films to the Temescal Arts Center between 2pm and 3pm.

All submissions will get the white glove treatment and be inspected by film archivists to make sure it is safe to project. Films are first come, first screened and may be limited to one reel per person.

No home movie will be turned away. Bring your family films or home movies you might have found in a thrift store. We love surprises!

RSVP here.

“Kubo” Is Complicated, Flawed, And You Should Totally See It This Weekend

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Kubo and the Two Strings is the newest offering from Laika Entertainment, a studio that specializes in stop-motion animation. Known for films such as Coraline (a personal favorite) and Paranorman, Laika produces beautiful pieces that take the art to a new level. This is not Gumby. This is nuanced, evocative animation that breathes and glides. The physics make sense. The emotions are human.

In the film our protagonist, Kubo, is a young storyteller who uses a shamisen to channel magic and bring his stories to life through origami. The movie is set in ancient Japan in an unidentified time/region, though at a Q&A I attended director Travis Knight identified the architecture as Heian Era and a main visual influence as sosaku hanga artist Kiyoshi Saito, best known for his snow landscapes that capture Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima (one of my family’s hometowns).

When his mysterious origins come back to terrorize him and his mother faces off with her ruthless magical sisters (rocking some Beyonce-level hats), Kubo goes on an adventure with an enchanted monkey and a strange beetle warrior to find a suit of armor that his legendary father once sought.

It makes more sense when you see the film. It sounds five words away from a dumpster fire when you don’t — thankfully, it isn’t.

It actually isn’t that bad

The elements read as a recipe for disaster. It’s an animated-ish film about Japan with a trailer that features orientalist flourishes like origami and magic. In a cultural moment when even a Broadway show helmed by George Takei decides to invent Japanese traditions and rewrite history (it was a great show, just weird at times), I’ve walked into any remotely “Asian” production ready for a failure.

The title alone raises questions — shamisens have three strings and Kubo is usually a surname, not a first name. Most glaringly, the production credits feature no Japanese or Japanese American names until you get to the cast (more on that further down). With all this in mind I walked into the screening expecting the cringe I’ve grown accustomed to. Instead I was greeted with one of the most careful representations of Japan I’ve seen on screen in the past decade, though perhaps that isn’t saying much.

It isn’t perfect. There are many, prominent hairs to split. Everyone talks like that one knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade whose job it is to guard the holy grail. No one pronounces the word “samurai” correctly. During an obon scene they play Tanko Bushi and Soran Bushi, neither of which were typical bon odori songs until the mid-1900s and originate from opposite ends of Japan (meanwhile in that same scene background characters are wearing amigasa hats associated with a specific dance called Awa Odori which is from yet another part of Japan). The credits are beautiful until there’s a random geisha, then a rickshaw man, then taiko players using bamboo instead of traditional wood.

Photo by Sean Miura.

Photo by Sean Miura.

And if I were that guy I could get caught up on that mess, but I’m not and I can’t. The crew actually did a pretty great job. The shamisen, supplied by the legendary Kevin Masaya Kmetz and Hibiki Ichikawa, sounds and even looks top notch. The clothing feels right. The Moon King’s garb looks more Chinese than Japanese and, even if it was unintentional, evokes the Chinese roots of Japan’s mythology and religions. A gashadokuro makes an appearance. The beetle warrior was presumably imagined from the realization that kabuto, the word for samurai helmet, lends itself to kabutomushi, the word for horned beetle.

On top of that I would criticize the stereotypical characterization of Kubo as an origami-folding shamisen player except as an origami-folding shamisen player myself I really have no standing.

The story has ancestry in tales like Momotaro, Kaguyahime, and the Buddhist story of the Rabbit in the Moon. The lake scene evokes Urashima Taro and the fortress climax calls to all the epic dark temple battles scattered throughout Japanese ghost stories. They even hired a Japanese culture consultant, Taro Goto, who has context for Japanese culture, American consumption, and Asian American sensitivity [editor’s note: Goto is CAAM’s former Festival Associate Director]. It doesn’t feel like a native Japanese story nor a native Japanese production, but it doesn’t feel disrespectful either.

So as a script, story, and production I have hard time knocking it. I’ve long asked for an animated film rooted in the stories I grew up with, a rich mine of magical creatures, courageous heroes, and palpable evil within every downtrodden temple. Kubo delivers all this and with a visually stunning vocabulary. For a stop motion film featuring an Asian face and an Asian story, there was a massive marketing budget behind it. I formerly worked in theatrical media planning and driving around Los Angeles, they bought some very pricey billboards.

You can even get (underwhelming) Kubo toys in your Burger King Kids Meal. It’s cool.

The studio clearly believed in this film in a way I’ve seen few studios believe in films that center an Asian story and Asian faces. It’s an impressive show of faith and I can’t help but think of what the impact of a blockbuster push like this is on a generation of Asian American kids seeing themselves as the hero for the first time on screen.

Behind the face, however, is where it gets complicated.

Photo by Sean Miura

Photo by Sean Miura

The Casting

Though the characters are all Asian, the main cast is largely white. George Takei represents with his signature “Oh my” (like that’s literally one of his only lines) and gets billboard credit for it, but that’s really about it for the Js. The filmmakers tried to make amends by casting a largely Japanese American chorus for looping and then shoving their names into the credits with generic Japanese names we never hear in the film or billing as “Villager #1.”

And the sidestepping and pandering is apparent. Prominently highlighting Japanese American names in what is essentially the “Extras” section and getting George Takei for two-three lines then giving him billboard credit is a great way to pre-empt backlash for the lack of people of color, let alone Asian Americans, let alone Japanese or Japanese American voices in the main cast. In a year where Twitter has been ablaze with hashtags (#whitewashedOUT, #StarringJohnCho, #StarringConstanceWu), Matt Damon is saving China, and we’re seeing more and more Asian American celebrities engaging their communities, there are eyes on a film called Kubo and the Two Strings with a trailer that hints at impending doom and cultural failure.

It isn’t as if it would have been hard to balance the cast, either. If for investor reasons they needed to cast the leads with “names” then let Kubo, Monkey, and Beetle be voiced by “names,” sure. We can keep pretending that superstar voices lead to box office viability in animation. But there are plenty of lines from the core supporting cast that could have been filled by the George Takeis, the Amy Hills, and the Tamlyn Tomitas of the world.

These are actors who grew up around family who spoke with tone, stress, and subtlety we brought from Japan and passed down with every first word and every shared meal. These voices are not crafted. They are not built off of assumption or imitation, informed or otherwise. Instead these voices are inherited and used with lives of their own informed by generations of ritual, manner, tradition, and heritage.

The Frustration

So it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating that they went lengths to respect and distill our traditions, our heritages, and our stories without us in the picture. It’s frustrating to hear Matthew McConaughey phone in his performance and know that he was only in the movie for PR when a film like this could not only enrich another actor’s career but be enriched itself.

But what’s most frustrating personally is that I walked out of the second screening extremely happy with the film because it was actually informed. It’s frustrating that I’m still ecstatic to see a crew do its due research when that should be the base expectation. It’s frustrating that though I am frustrated with the casting, I am willing to give it a pass because I know that this is an intermediary towards larger things down the road. It’s frustrating to know that in this moment, we must take what we can get while continuing to push for more human representations of our people, our communities, and our stories — with us front and center.

Photo by Sean Miura.

Photo by Sean Miura.

In the opening lines, Kubo tell the audience that “If you must blink, do it now.” We are in a fascinating, blink-of-an-eye transitionary time when Asian Americans are taking a foothold in the industry and showing up in places we never expected them even two or three years ago. Kubo is one second of this moment. There will be more, though perhaps with hesitancy as Kubo opened at a low $12M (the lowest of Laika’s films so far).

We are in a time of battle-picking in which things will very quickly shift and reform. This is the second wide-release children’s film in a couple years to feature an Asian face in a leading role, though Big Hero 6 focused its marketing on robot-marshmallow Baymax instead of Hiro. The last time we got this was Mulan in 1998, nearly 20 years ago.

So I am frustrated but I am also going to appreciate this film for what it is. We have always asked for Hollywood to treat our heritages as living texts to study rather than empty set pieces and Kubo sets the bar high. We have always seen opportunity in the stories we were raised with and Kubo took them in.

Tomorrow I will look up at the three Kubo billboards next to my office in Hollywood and smile at the Japanese faces leaping from them. Perhaps next to me there will be a Hollywood hopeful, that much more energized to jump into the day and find their voice. Perhaps somewhere there will be a Japanese American 13-year-old walking out of a theater, 3 inch x 3 inch packet of origami paper in pocket, armed with a new sense of possibility.

For Asian Americans, Kubo is part of a larger ecosystem that includes Hollywood blockbusters, independent festival circuits, and YouTube manifestos and it has a very clear, specific role in that ecosystem. We can criticize it in a vacuum, yes, but then we have an opportunity to uplift work that is created by our own communities. Context, as always, is key.

Despite the pandering, the missed opportunities, and Matthew McConaughey, see the film. Kubo and the Two Strings is not perfect. Try as it may (and it does), it is no Miyazaki film. But it is a beautifully rendered reminder that powerful stories can come from anywhere. I’ve never said this before and I’ll probably never say it again, but for all the reasons you should not see Kubo, the film is worth the tradeoff.

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Sean Miura is a Los Angeles-based writer, performer, and community organizer. He currently produces the nation’s oldest Asian American free performance/mic series, Little Tokyo’s 18-year-old Tuesday Night Cafe. His writing has been featured in the Harvard Asian American Policy Review and blogs such as Reappropriate, Mishti Music, and Project Ava.

This is an edited version of an article printed at Down Like JTown: Contextualizing Asian American L.A. with permission from the author. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAAM.

Emiko and Chizu Omori on lessons from WWII Incarceration

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In 1942, sisters Emiko and Chizu Omori were sent with their family from Southern California to the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona. Emiko was one and a half. Chizu was 12.

Decades later, Chizu became involved in the redress movement to pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans for their forced relocation and incarceration during World War II. By this time, Emiko had become a respected cinematographer. She had started her career at KQED as one of the first camerawomen to work in news documentaries. The sisters felt there should be a film about the Japanese American incarceration during WWII.

“And we said, well, who better to tell the story than us? We were there,” Emiko recalls.

The resulting feature length documentary, Rabbit in the Moon, was directed and narrated by Emiko and co-produced with Chizu. The Omoris explore their childhood experiences in the internment camps and the divisions that split generations and the Japanese American community along political lines. The film played at the 1999 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival the same year, as well as an Emmy.

This year, CAAM honors Emiko for her long career in filmmaking, which includes Curtis Choy’s The Fall of the I-Hotel, Barbara Sonneborn’s Regret to Inform, Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, and Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World. Rabbit in the Moon as well as Emiko’s new wordless short film, When Rabbit Left the Moon, screen at this year’s festival. These films are part of special programming in this year’s CAAMFest that mark the 75th anniversary of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. The Fall of the I-Hotel, for which Emiko was a cinematographer, screens at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation at this year’s CAAMFest.

This year also marks the 35th anniversary of CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Emiko premiered her short film, Tattoo City, at the inaugural festival in 1982.

I talked to Emiko, 76, and Chizu, a writer, 86, over the phone.

—Melissa Hung

Emiko, how does it feel to have the CAAMFest spotlight on you?
Of course I’m completely honored to be invited to this exclusive club of illustrious, luminary media people like Wayne Wang, Joan Chen, Arthur Dong and Loni Ding. And I’ve been thinking of the irony of this year, because NAATA at the time and now CAAM, was a big supporter of our movie Rabbit in the Moon, and we probably couldn’t have finished it without their infusion of funds. [It’s] about our family and our community experience in the concentration camps during World War II, and talks about “What is an American?” and “What is loyalty?” These are some of the big questions we posed. … And so it just seems kind of ironic — here it is back in the news big time now. And it’s because of the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. I think prior to this time, we vaguely knew about executive orders and presidents signing them when leading office. We didn’t pay that close attention to the meaning of them. Now with this administration and executive orders, people are quite aware of what they mean and the consequences of signing something — which sounds like you sign a piece of paper somewhere and that’s that — but it has real consequences. And then obviously the other connection is this whole thing of rounding up people and possibly putting them in camps. Like, here we are — again. It’s a good time to be bringing [the film] back and reminding people of what can happen. And you know it’s at this point we don’t really know what’s going to happen. It’s kind of scary.

Do they think something like the camps could happen again?
Chizu: Yes. They keep referring to Executive Order 9066 as a kind of an aberration or mistake or something. However…

Emiko: It set a precedent.

Chizu: That’s what I mean. It set a precedent that is still on the books more or less. There’s a lot of legality to all of this. I mean, you say, “Oh, it can’t happen here again.” It easily could — and very quickly.

Emiko: And in some ways it already is. There’s already Mexican immigrants that are being held in prison-like situations awaiting their immigration hearings. They’re in camps or prisons.

Chizu: Yeah, like in Texas. I have a friend who has actually gone down to visit one of these detention centers. And she’s also a survivor of camps and so she said it was eerily parallel to our situation. It’s happening in various ways already. Could it happen again? It’s happening already.

Rabbit_In_The_Moon1

Still from “Rabbit in the Moon.”

Drawing on your own experience of advocating for redress and knowing what your family went through, what lessons do you think can be applied now?
Chizu: I think American Japanese — we’re forming informal organizations that can, as a group, show up at rallies and what not. And just by embodying what actually did happen in 1942 — we are living proof of the dangers of executive overreach — and so we would like to be the witnesses to anything of a similar nature that could be put into place right now.

A lot of us went to the Women’s March a couple weekends ago and interestingly, some people — some American Japanese — did have placards saying “Never again.” One of them said “Jailed by a president.” This big sign was picked up by a lot of news media. We saw that and said, “Ah, we should have put signs like that too.”

Emiko: I think we are trying to be vocal and out there because we didn’t have that much support in our position when we were taken to camp. So we want to be sure we show up to show solidarity with these groups. And that photo that went viral, it was an elderly woman in her 90s in a wheelchair. She had this sign and yes, there’s something about living proof. “I was there.” … It wasn’t history and a long time ago. We’re still here and we went through it.

And of course times have changed now with social media. We can suddenly gather up a group and say, “We’re going to do this.” And a lot of the movers and shakers in our group, we’re all survivors and we’re determined we’re not going to let this be forgotten. We are kind of the end of the survivors. Once our group is gone, there won’t be any eyewitnesses.

The film is showing at CAAMFest this year. What was it like to show your film the first time at festival?
Emiko: It is thrilling and gratifying to finally see something you’ve been working on — ’cause we worked on it for eight or nine years—to see it on a big screen in a beautiful theater and have people respond, and respond positively. … Just to know that you have communicated something to people and started a dialogue. We had people … come up and particularly younger American Japanese saying, “We never talked about it. But when my parents saw Rabbit, we talked about it.” So that was so gratifying to know it was helping the community to heal.

Chizu: It lifted the silence surrounding it in the community. [Camp] really scarred the community so that people found it very hard to talk about it. … They would say, “Well, we don’t want to burden our children with these sad memories and all that.” … I think people felt very helpless, that they weren’t able to do anything about it.

Can you talk about the new short film you made, which uses some of the footage from Rabbit in the Moon?
Emiko: The metaphor about the rabbit in the moon in the movie Rabbit in the Moon is the fact that in Japan, that’s what we see in the moon. We see a rabbit. And here in the West, we see a man in the moon. That’s my way of saying, why can’t I see both of those things? And yet in the camps because of the loyalty questionnaire, they want you to forget that part of you and embrace the western side of you. And so this little [film], which is called When Rabbit Left the Moon, is my way of saying that the camps did in a way give up our Japanese side. … Because before the camps, there was a lot of community. The American Japanese community was going strong despite all the restrictions and laws and everything. They were doing a successful immigrant community here. And then the camps said, “You got to forget that side if you want to make it here.”

Chizu: I think that the question that was raised is one of identity, like if you’re going to be so severely victimized and punished for your ancestry, then it’s got to set up confusion about who one is.

Emiko: And you do begin to not like yourself because you can’t shift that other whatever they’ve asked you to be. It’s really weird because in my mind — because I’m looking out from my mind — I’m American. But then you realize people looking at you make a lot of other assumptions.

It’s the perpetual foreigner problem.
Chizu: Japan has become a world power and obviously China. It’s practically overtaking over the United States so that in a lot of ways, we can’t escape the relationships that the United States has with Asia in general. … I can see where if there’s great hostility between the U.S. and China, which is possible, it will reflect on all Asian Americans, because they can’t tell us apart.

Where do you see Asian American media in 10 years and what advice do you have for emerging storytellers? 
Emiko: Let me put it this way — I started making films and working in media back in the late ’60s so certainly the landscape has changed tremendously since then. There’s a lot more American Asians. There’s a lot more young people — because technology changes and they can afford small cameras and that kind of thing — it’s pretty wide open. … Like this year, there were a lot of wonderful things being recognized — documentaries and feature films being made by African Americans. I don’t know if that was just a coincidence from the last year’s Academy Awards fiasco. And it takes a while to develop this. It takes a generation or two. And so I have high hopes that we’ll be producing wonderful storytellers.

My sister and I were talking about how right now times are so uncertain. Where are we going to be in 10 years or four years? But you just have to keep on doing what you’re doing. I have high hopes that in 10 years, we’re going to have a bunch of American Asian names in those areas of the Academy, in documentaries and feature films. We still don’t have a big presence in all that.

Chizu: You know, when credits roll on whatever it is — TV show, movie, whatever — usually if I‘m with film people like my sister and a lot of our friends, they watch the credits. When I see an Asian name, they jump out at me. I can see that in a lot of the background jobs, there’s a lot of Asian Americans working in various capacities, so that’s a good sign. But to hit the big time, to become a major movie star or a first rank director, well, we’re getting a few people in there. That’s the next leap. Like Cary Fukunaga — I think his work is just terrific.

And I feel that we don’t want to be stuck in our niche positions, that if you want to be a filmmaker — who’s that guy? Justin Lin? — he’s kind of a breakout. He’s in mainstream movie making now too. People should be free to not have to be bound by their ethnic identity. That seems to be taking place.

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The interview is made possible by Comcast and has been edited for length and clarity. 

Melissa Hung is a writer and independent journalist in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter at @fluffysharp.

Rabbit in the Moon

Peel back the long-silent veneer covering the internment of Japanese Americans and witness an intimately complex and tense history in RABBIT IN THE MOON. Emiko Omori’s award-winning film explores her own childhood experiences within the camps and the political tensions between generations living there.
Expected Guest in Attendance: Emiko Omori (Director/Writer/Producer)
Gray Area
March 12, 2017 2:00 pm 
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When Rabbit Left the Moon

Omori pays homage to the generation of her parents.
Expected Guest in Attendance: Emiko Omori (Director/Writer/Producer)
Co-presented by: Fred T. Korematsu Institute, Human Rights Campaign, Nichi Bei Foundation
Precedes: Relocation, Arkansas — Aftermath of Incarceration
New People Cinema
March 18, 2017 7:00 pm
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The Fall of the I-Hotel

Forcible evictions devastated a manong community after the International Hotel was demolished in 1981, marking the destruction of the last block of San Francisco’s Manilatown. Narrated by late poet Al Robles, THE FALL OF THE I-HOTEL tells the story of 50 old-timers displaced by 300 cops in the dead of night and the overall impacts of urban renewal.
Expected Guests in Attendance: Curtis Choy (Director/Writer/Producer), Emiko Omori (Cinematographer)
Co-presented by: Manilatown Heritage Foundation

Gray Area
March 12, 2017 7:20 pm
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Q&A with PBS Online Film Festival Director Cyrus Yoshi Tabar

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It Is What It Is tells the story of Writer, Director and Editor Cyrus Yoshi Tabar’s perplexing journey to learn more about his heritage through unusual audio and visual effects. PBS spoke with Cyrus to find out more about his ambiguous film. 

PBS: There’s something haunting about the mix of audio you use during the introduction of your film and the shaky images/footage of you with your grandparents. What were you trying to evoke from the audience? Why did you want to portray it this way?

Cyrus Yoshi Tabar: I experimented with so many different techniques throughout the creation of the film. My main objective was to evoke the feeling of remembering; the nebulous, foggy, and even sharp moments of clarity that our memories conjure. I was making the film in real time as I was piecing together my family history, so nothing was ever concrete. The ‘shaky’ image technique came from a happy accident while tinkering with the camera. I looked at the footage and thought, “Wow. That’s how I’ll do it!”

The sound design was integral to the edit. There wasn’t much of a logical progression to the process, but more of a meditative and experimental approach. I wanted to use metaphor and suggestion within the sound design, like birds flying, icebergs breaking, and fires burning. Somehow the combination of these sounds and images strike a delicate balance that I’m really happy with.

More from the Q&A on PBS.org!

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Watch and vote for It Is What It Is!

Effort to Save Tule Lake WWII Site from Fence

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Planning has been underway to fence off a municipal airport near Tule Lake, a historic WWII American concentration camp in California (sometimes called an *”internment camp”). The plans would include fencing off nearly two-thirds of the site, where some 19,000-24,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during the war. If the plans go through, it would close off access to the barracks where people lived. The Tule Lake National Historic Landmark is part of the National Park Service (though the historic site is only a portion of the entire camp) and every other year, people make pilgrimages to the site to learn about the history. Grandparents and parents bring their children to visit where their relatives slept during the war. Tule Lake was the most controversial of all of the camps because it housed those deemed “disloyal” to the U.S.

CAAM recently funded a film by Konrad Aderer, which premiered at CAAMFest 2017, called Resistance at Tule Lake. The film chronicles the history of resistance during the war and connects issues from the past to the current political climate.

The Tulelake Municipal Airport has applied to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to build the fence, and the FAA is taking public comments until October 10, 2017. Instructions on how to do so are here. There is also a Change.org petition, which currently has 35,000 supporters, with the goal of 100,000.

For more information, read this article from Reappropriate or visit the Save Tule Lake Facebook page for updates.

*See the Japanese American Citizens League preferred language (pages 10-13).

ANN CURRY’S NEW PBS SHOW “WE’LL MEET AGAIN” PREMIERES JAN. 23 — EXCLUSIVE Q&A

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Award-winning journalist Ann Curry has taken the American public through war and natural disaster zones, shared stories of human resilience, and shown us the power of storytelling. The former NBC News Network anchor and international correspondent has a new show on PBS, We’ll Meet Again, which premieres next Tuesday, January 23.

The show takes us on a journey where people whose lives were impacted during historic moments—Japanese American incarceration during WWII and during 9/11, for example—who are then reunited. The premise makes for emotional storytelling, and the true lesson and takeaway is that people, and often strangers, can impact peoples’ lives for decades. And through these everyday people, we also learn about these historic moments.

In this particular time in U.S. history, it’s a fitting show that unabashedly displays the essence of our common humanity. When people take the time to see others, to be kind, and to focus more on the positive rather than negative, individual people can make lasting and positive impact.

Curry has been caught in the maelstrom of the news cycle herself, from her leaving of the Today show to her recent opening up about Matt Lauer and allegations of sexual harassment. Curry has also been outspoken about the disparity among men and women journalists and called for more women in leadership positions in all fields; to that end, she started her own production company, Ann Curry Inc., and the show is the first project of the company. Curry is a Co-executive Producer and Reporter of We’ll Meet Again, a six-part series that focuses on 12 peoples’ stories. For Curry though—and not that she shies away from these controversial topics—it’s clear that what she would like is to continue being an investigative journalist who can also bring out the humanity in every situation.

I chatted with her via phone just a few days before the premiere of We’ll Meet Again to talk about her hopes for the new show, her vision for her future in journalism and documentary, and how her own parents’ story influenced We’ll Meet Again.

—Momo Chang

What is your interest in this type of storytelling, of telling individual stories?
I have spent my career covering world-changing events, such as wars and humanitarian disasters and political changes. When we started working on this idea, it just felt so exactly something I could contribute to. It just felt completely like something that could be beneficial to people. So that’s why I decided to be a part of this and be a Co-executive Producer on the project.

This is a view of these kinds of events through the eyes of, not presidents and generals and people who write about history, it’s through the eyes of common community members who survived these events. You discover about not just them, and about these massive moments in history, it’s also a reflection on ourselves, about our ability to find resilience and strength and overcoming great odds. I think it’s really the story of all of us.

The people you focus on, as you mentioned, are everyday people. They’re reunited over a long period of time. What do you hope viewers get out of watching the show as people share their stories? 
I think in those cases they’ll learn about these massive moments in history. I think people will gain an understanding about how much we can mean to each other, as human beings. That even things you may not have remembered you’ve done, an act of kindness that you have contributed, that you can actually have been a part of changing someone else’s life. And that is what we find in these moments. These people are looking for the people who have helped them, physically or emotionally. Sometimes it’s people they barely knew. Sometimes it’s just people who became their friend. In most cases, it’s people who helped them rise again.

[Someone said], this is the type of storytelling we need right now. What I think he meant, what I heard from what he said, is that we’re living in a time where we’re forgetting how much we mean to each other. How good we really are. About the true greatness that exists in human beings, the true light in addition to all the dark—that this is actually who we really are.

Can you talk about how your own personal background and how it influences your storytelling [Curry’s parents, Bob Curry and Hiroe Nagase, fell in love when he was stationed in Japan during WWII]?
How it influences me is I understand the true power of these stories, being the daughter of a mother and a father who were kept apart in the wake of World War II for two years, who wanted to marry but were prevented from marrying and were forced to be apart for two years. And they yearned for each other, and finally were able to marry, despite that forced separation. And also her illness, her terminal case of tuberculosis. And she would have died had he not saved her life by getting her the medical care that allowed her to live.

I am the oldest of their five children and the legacy they left me was what my mother would say, ganbaru, which is a Japanese word which means, you never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up. This lesson is deep within me. And the power of their resilience is deep within me. I think my own personal history in my own family has made it very clear to me how powerful these stories are.

I feel as though I’ve been shopping for a gift for people, for people I love. And that I’ve finally found this beautiful gift and I’ve wrapped it up and now I’m just waiting to see how people will react. I know these stories have value. I know these stories have power and beauty. And now I’m just waiting to see how the public will respond.

Do you have other projects that you’re working on—what are your future plans?
Sure. I have a number of projects that are on the burners, and they are all moving forward. This is the first one. The others are in a similar vein of world-changing events and what I can contribute to lifting up in being more aware and better informed about things that may affect our lives. I started a company called Ann Curry, Inc. and I’m working on these projects with others. Much of it is news and documentary, primarily documentary. This one is a fun project and I’m super excited to bring it to the public.

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Catch the premiere of We’ll Meet Again on PBS Tuesday, January 23, 2018 (check local listings).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hope in Hard Times: a Conversation with Brenda Wong Aoki

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Banished families, anti-Asian hysteria, and two lives interwoven by activism and art. These themes make up the multifaceted performance of Bay Area storyteller Brenda Wong Aoki’s AUNT LILY’S FLOWER BOOK: 100 YEARS OF LEGALIZED RACISM, which will close CAAMFest this year on May 24 at the Herbst Theater. Wong Aoki shifts between playing multiple characters, from her own ancestors to those of her husband’s, composer Mark Izu. AUNT LILY’S centers around the hopes and successes of each family, and the impact of long-standing anti-Asian sentiment: from Izu’s father, who served in (and survived) the 442nd during World War II, to Wong Aoki’s Japanese grandfather, who was kicked out of the San Francisco community he founded. AUNT LILY’S is Wong Aoki’s way to bring about community healing. Rather than “watching a play,” she says, “It’s about bearing witness. These are people who really lived.”

Diana Tsuchida

What was your biggest inspiration for writing AUNT LILY’S FLOWER BOOK: 100 YEARS OF LEGALIZED RACISM?
It’s a compilation of things, which is kind of amazing that it all worked. But it’s basically pulling together my personal story, my family with Mark’s family and putting it together through the lens of us as performing artists. We came into the arts as activists. Mark had been a union organizer in San Francisco, and I had come more from education and community organizing around street gangs and keeping the peace. At some point we realized there are good people doing social service, but there’s not as many people impacting the human heart and energizing the soul. And if you can’t energize the soul, a general will tell you that you can’t win a war without the hearts and minds.

When you were unearthing family stories, which one shocked you the most?
I was blown away to find out that my grandpa had founded [San Francisco] Japantown in 1897. He was sent by the Meiji Emperor to start the first Japanese settlement in America with support from the Episcopal Church, which at the time was called the Anglican Church. All I knew is that I was a ghetto girl from Long Beach who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. And then I find out that grandpa was daimyo [feudal lords]. We go back to the Yoshinaka and the Genji Heike wars. We had pedigree. And when grandpa’s little brother Gunjiro ran away with a white girl, he must have been humiliated that the archdeacon of the church, who was of lower status, could send him and grandma away to Utah to convert the Mormons.

What I realized is that knowing your past you can change your future. But I didn’t really understand until now that you have to try really hard to change your future. The past is so responsible for your behavior and your perspective.
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You live on both sides of the cultural landscape with Chinese and Japanese heritage. Was that part of the reason why you wanted to do a performance like AUNT LILY’S?
I have to be inspired. It is has to feel that there was some divine intervention that says, “This is what needs to be said through the collective unconsciousness right now.” Before Aunt Lily came out, I was supposed to do another show, a much easier thing because Obama was in, and then Hillary was going to win, and life was just going to go on. I thought maybe it was a nice time for a love story. And when Trump won, it was just so jaw-dropping, it was just like some sci-fi horror movie. And I felt that the job of a storyteller is to bring the community together to act as an intermediary between the universe and the people and weave us together strategies for living, hope in hard times, and reassurance that humankind has been here before.

Is there anything you do to prepare to perform? Do you have some kind of ritual?
I rehearse a lot. I rehearse about a month in advance with just myself. And then we have about eight rehearsals with the band and then we have three rehearsals with the multimedia. I can’t really start talking to anybody about a month before showtime, I have to just really be in the show. I want to stay with all these people. I feel so responsible.

What advice do you give to aspiring storytellers and artists who want to utilize their family stories?
I think it’s really important to speak in first person. If you can get stories in first person, nothing beats primary source. And you have to really dig through your consciousness and feel whether or not you’re pimping pain because some people like to go out there and wallow in their sorrow, but what is the point? Use it to build a connection between hearts.

When people watch AUNT LILY’S at CAAMFest, what meaning do you hope they take away?
I want us to come together and shine our lights together because you know, more flashlights together make more clarity in the darkness.That’s basically what we’ve got right now, we’ve got somebody pulling the wool over our eyes. We just need to shine a light. I learned this from my Chinese side: You can’t let them get you down because then they’re winning. And if nothing else, just live.

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Dates & Times

Aunt Lily’s Flower Book

Herbst Theatre
May 24, 2018 7:00 pm

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Mark Izu and Brenda Wong Aoki Present Japanese American Home Movies at SF Music Day

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The Mark Izu Ensemble with Brenda Wong Aoki present the world premiere of Japanese American Home Movies to Light on Sunday, September 30th, 3:30-4 pm at the Herbst Theatre during San Francisco Music Day 2018. Emmy-winning Asian American Jazz composer Mark Izu and mono-dramatist, storyteller Brenda Wong Aoki will present a new work featuring spoken word in live ensemble with both traditional Asian and Western instrumentation. The event is free and open to the public.

Brenda Wong Aoki was featured as CAAMFest 2018’s Closing Night Presentation with her show, Aunt Lily’s Flower Book: One Hundred Years of Legalized Racism.

Read our Q&A with Brenda here.

The anchor of this new work includes archival footage from Japanese American family home movies digitized and preserved through CAAM’s Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies initiative.

Learn more and RSVP for SF Music Day 2018 here.

Actress Nichole Bloom Discusses Her Journey to “Superstore” at CAAMFest37

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Nichole Bloom may be best known for her role as Cheyenne on the hit NBC series, Superstore. While she’s been experiencing success from the show, it took many years to get to where she is now.

In conversation with NBC Entertainment and Universal Television Studios’ Talent Development & Inclusion’s Senior Vice President Karen Horne at this year’s CAAMFest, Bloom went into detail on how she began pursuing acting when she was eight years old. Her parents were supportive from the beginning, and at age 14, the same time her brother started college, the whole family moved from Santa Clara to Los Angeles.

“Be relentless about it” was advice Bloom carried with her as she signed on with an agent, who made it clear that making it as an actress would be very hard for her because she’s mixed race. Bloom is of Japanese descent on her mom’s side and Irish descent on her dad’s.

Nonetheless, she persevered, and her first opportunity arrived at age 20 when she landed a role in a studio comedy. Unexpectedly, she then lost the job when the producers thought she was too shy, and the role wound up going to a white actress instead.

In thinking about her biracial identity, Bloom does feel more inclined to her Japanese side, noting that she sees herself as having a very reserved persona. But as she iterated, “I don’t want to always be defined by my ethnicity.” She learned that she needed to be upfront about what she wants in the industry.

When she landed her current role as Cheyenne in Superstore at age 25, the opportunity really allowed for her to demonstrate her acting chops with all the humorous moments and situations her character gets caught up in over the past four seasons. Her favorite episode is from this past season, where Cheyenne experiments with being a tattoo artist.

She also talked about how she shares several scenes with Nico Santos, who plays Mateo, and that she gets along with in real life.

“What started off catty eventually became them versus everyone else,” she said regarding their characters.

Even though she’s primarily known for acting, Bloom explained how that’s not all she wants to do. In 2013, she wrote, directed, and starred in a short film, Kiko in America. She made a lot of short films with her brother when they were growing up, and she hopes to do more in the future.

In a time where a shift in who and what stories appear onscreen is happening, Bloom feels optimistic in that the industry is getting there. The Talent Development and Inclusion team that interviewer Horne oversees aims to add to that shift even more by making efforts to incorporate diversity and inclusion in all aspects at NBC.

Asked what audiences can do to help on their end, Bloom replied that, “Where audiences put their money makes a difference.”

Superstore will return for its fifth season this fall on NBC.

Watch CAAMFest Films “Atomic Cafe” and “Phony” in the PBS Short Film Festival

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CAAM will have two films in the 2021 PBS Short Film Festival, running from July 12-23. For the tenth annual festival, we are proud that the films Atomic Cafe: The Noisiest Corner in J-Town and Phony will be available for streaming by audiences nationwide. These shorts both screened at CAAMFest FORWARD in October 2020 and are examples of the breadth of stories that can be found in Asian America.

The short documentary, Atomic Cafe, takes a look back at a diner in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo that was started by a Japanese American family after World War II. In the late 1970s and early 80s, the cafe became a hub for the punk scene. The film focuses on the restaurant’s bold proprietor, nicknamed “Atomic Nancy”. 

Atomic Cafe

“Growing up I would hear my parents talk about this ‘Atomic Nancy’ and how she had such a powerful voice when she sang with the group Hiroshima, one of the most famous Japanese American bands,” says Tad Nakamura, who co-directed Atomic Cafe with Akira Boch

The documentary uses interviews, along with archival photos, to shine light on how Asian Americans and other people of color were integral to the punk movement.

“If you look closely at the photos of LA’s punk music scene in the late 70s and early 80s, you’ll see that people of color were present and actively making that culture alongside the white kids,” says Boch. “In my view, they were rallying around the themes of rebellion and alienation more than anything else, which people from any background can relate to.”

Jess dela Merced in PHONY

In the dark comedy Phony, Sunny, a young Asian American woman with anger management issues, returns home to the San Gabriel Valley seeking respite from her recent career failures— but a simple grocery shopping trip with her mother may prove more than she can handle. Director Jess dela Merced also plays the lead in this film.

“I hope people will find laughter and comfort in the details of this very specific but highly universal story about a daughter who just wants to make her mom proud – on her own terms,” says dela Merced. “I feel like it’s sometimes harder for me to express my emotions and struggles with family members and sometimes suppressing those feelings can lead to unfortunate, albeit hilarious, moments. I know a lot of Asian Americans can relate to this and hope they know they’re not alone.”

Atomic Cafe and Phony will be streaming on the PBS Short Film Festival website July 12-23, 2021. 

You can also join in the online conversation by tagging @PBS and using #PBSFilmFest on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

 

 

About the PBS Short Film Festival

The festival features 25 short-form independent films presented in six categories: culture, family, humanity, identity, race and society.  A panel of nine jury members will select their favorite film of the festival for the Juried Prize.

Films featured in the PBS Short Film Festival have been selected and provided by 15 public media partners and PBS member stations. This year’s lineup includes films from Black Public Media, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Independent Television Service (ITVS), Latino Public Broadcasting, Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), POV, Reel South, Vision Maker Media and World Channel, as well as PBS local member stations, Alabama Public Television (APTV), Illinois Public Media, KLRU-TV Austin PBS, Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB), MPT Digital Studios, and WSIU (Illinois).

 


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