video i Season 12
#1206 – Original Airdate: Mon, March 19 at 10pm
25th SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
Featuring films and interviews from the festival
PILGRIMAGE (Dir. Tadashi Nakamura)
Features and interview with the filmmaker
Pilgrimage tells the inspiring story of how a small group of Japanese Americans in the late 1960s transformed an abandoned WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans into a symbol of retrospection and solidarity for people of all ages, races and nationalities. With a hip music track, never-before-seen archival footage and a story-telling style that features both old and new pilgrims, Pilgrimage is the first film to show how the WWII camps were reclaimed by the children of its victims and how the Manzanar Pilgrimage now has fresh meaning for diverse generations of people who realize that when the US government herded thousands of innocent Americans into what the government itself called concentration camps, it was failure of democracy that would affect all Americans. As the U.S. is again in tumultuous times, Pilgrimage is a timely and engaging film that brings new and much-needed insight to the lessons of the past for our post 9/11 world. You can learn more about this film at: myspace.com/pilgrimagethemovie.
Filmmaker Bio
Tadashi H. Nakamura is a 26 year old, fourth-generation Japanese American and second-generation filmmaker. Born and raised in Los Angeles, his introduction to film began when he was 9 days old and made his first and last on-screen appearance in Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), the first feature-length narrative film produced by Asian Americans, which was directed by his father, award-winning filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura. His interest in making film developed when he took his father's EthnoCommunications course at UCLA where he began work on Yellow Brotherhood (2004), his first documentary, which won Best Documentary Short at the San Diego Asian Film Festival and has been featured in 16 film festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada. Besides carrying on his parents' work - his mother is writer/producer Karen L. Ishizuka - Nakamura seeks to tell his community's history to a new generation.
DOLL FACE (Dir. Andy Huang)
Doll Face follows a machine's struggle to construct its own identity. The machine with a doll face mimics images presented on a television screen and ultimately self-destructs from its inability to adopt a satisfactory visage. Created in its entirety by Andy Huang, Doll Face presents a visual account of desires misplaced and identities fractured by our technological extension into the future. For more about this film go to: betweenframes.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Andy Huang has directed and animated short films that have received both national and international recognition. His past animated work has been showcased at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival. His latest independent short film Doll Face was accepted into the Official Selection at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, as well as the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston. Andy continues to study fine arts and animation at the University of Southern California.
FOR NO ONE (Dir. Jeff Mizushima)
Molly has reached her quarter-life crisis. She just broke up with her long-term boyfriend and now, realizing her lack of independence, a change is in order. Her post-collegiate life needs an afterthought. In the process of turning her boyfriend in for a keyboard, Molly melancholically wanders through idyllic San Francisco drifting in and out of charmingly awkward moments and new beginnings. Rich in texture and color, this subtle film blooms in its quietness and poetic visual landscape. For more about this film go to: cine-prod.com.
Filmmaker Bio
Jeff Mizushima lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. at his co-founded Cineasta Productions as a videographer/non-linear editor. His time at UC Santa Cruz and Cal State Long Beach film schools has geared his filmmaking style toward low-key, personal character based films. For No One, his first short film to hit the festival circuit will be the springboard for his first feature length film, Etienne! which will be in production in the summer.
MEET THE MAVERICK – STEVEN OKAZAKI
Steven Okazaki's subjects range from heroin addicts to dairy princesses to Hiroshima survivors. He is the recipient of three Academy Award® nominations, an Oscar®, a Peabody and numerous other awards. His films, produced for HBO, PBS and NHK, are explorations of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. In the last ten years, much of his work has been with HBO Documentary Films. In 2000, HBO premiered the powerful Black Tar Heroin, a cinema-verite chronicle of the lives of five young heroin addicts. It was nominated for an Emmy and was one of HBO's highest rated documentaries that year. In 2005, he produced Rehab, a disturbing look at drug treatment, which won the prestigious Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award, honoring journalists who have "demonstrated the highest standards of reporting on drug issues." In 2006, he received his third Oscar® nomination for The Mushroom Club, a personal reflection on the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, which aired on HBO/Cinemax. He is currently completing White Light/Black Rain for HBO.
