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Description
In this award-winning documentary, filmmaker Kimi Takesue finds an unlikely collaborator while visiting her resilient Japanese-American grandfather in Hawai’i. A recent widower in his 90s, Grandpa Tom immerses himself in his daily routines until he shows unexpected interest in his granddaughter’s stalled romantic screenplay and offers advice both shrewd and surprising. Tom’s creative script revisions serve as a vehicle for his memories of love,...
Description
Examine the origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens.
Description
This two-part series presents the history, challenges, and lasting impact of early Asian immigrants to the Americas, from the 1700s to the 1900s. The series follows their little-known journeys and stories, reveals their pioneering struggle against racial hatred and for basic rights, and depicts their lasting cultural, legal and economic contributions to the building of the Americas.. Using a “documemoir” approach, ANCESTORS IN THE AMERICAS brings...
4) Aoki
Description
AOKI chronicles the life of Richard Aoki (1938-2009), a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party. Filmed over the last five years of Richard's life, this documentary features extensive footage with Richard and exclusive interviews with his comrades, friends, and former students. Viewers will learn about Richard's childhood in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp, growing up in West...
Description
This series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, and cultural innovation. It is a timely look at the role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation.
6) Bad Rap
Description
This award-winning documentary follows the lives and careers of four Asian-American rappers trying to break into hip-hop culture, which often treats them as outsiders. Sharing dynamic live performance footage and revealing interviews, these artists are driven to make the most skeptical critics into believers.. Official Selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. Winner of Best Documentary Feature at the San Diego Asian Film Festival and at the Los Angeles...
Description
By spring 1945, the United States sought to cut off Japan's supply line to the resource-rich islands of the South Pacific. An invasion of the island of Okinawa would achieve this objective. Codenamed "Operation Iceberg," this bloody battle shattered any remaining prospect of Japanese victory in the war.
Description
BETWEEN THE LINES offers rare interviews with over 15 major Asian-Pacific American women poets. Organized in interwoven sections such as Immigration, Language, Family, Memory, and Spirituality, it is a sophisticated merging of Asian-American history and identity with the questions of performance, voice, and image. This engaging documentary serves as poetry reading, virtual anthology, and, perhaps most importantly, moving testimony about gender, ethnicity,...
Description
Between Two Worlds: The Hmong Shaman in America powerfully exposes the struggle of Hmong refugees in America. This classic documentary traces the lives of three Hmong families displaced thousands of miles from their villages in Northern Laos and alienated in American cities. Renowned anthropologist Dwight Conquergood narrates the rich history of shamanic rituals and explains the similarity between Hmong beliefs and those of Aboriginal people of the...
10) Bitter Melon
Description
When a Filipino-American family reunites for a Christmas party, the holiday takes a dark turn when they conspire to murder the abusive bully of the family in this dark comedy by filmmaker H.P. Mendoza. Best Narrative Feature winner at the **San Diego Asian Film Festival**.
Description
Arrested at 16 and tried as an adult for kidnapping and robbery, Eddy Zheng served over 20 years in California prisons and jails. Ben Wang's BREATHIN': THE EDDY ZHENG STORY paints an intimate portrait of Eddy -- the prisoner, the immigrant, the son, the activist -- on his journey to freedom, rehabilitation and redemption.
On Shelf
Oak Lawn Public Library - AV
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Description
A native New Yorker, Rachel Chu accompanies her longtime boyfriend, Nick Young, to his best friend's wedding in Singapore. Excited about visiting Asia for the first time but nervous about meeting Nick's family, Rachel is unprepared to learn that Nick has neglected to mention a few key details about his life. It turns out that he is not only the scion of one of the country's wealthiest families but also one of its most sought-after bachelors.
13) Double Solitaire
Description
In DOUBLE SOLITAIRE, the filmmaker uses the motif of games to tell the story of her Japanese-American father and uncle’s incarceration as children in an internment camp during WWII, and the legacy of that experience up to the present day, including the effect of Redress and Reparations. Winner of the SECA Award in Film from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the King Hu Award from the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
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Description
When a Chinese-American police officer kills an innocent, unarmed Black man in a darkened stairwell of a New York City housing project, it sets off a firestorm of emotion and calls for accountability. When he becomes the first NYPD officer convicted of an on-duty shooting in over a decade, the fight for justice becomes complicated, igniting one of the largest Asian-American protests in history, disrupting a legacy of solidarity, and putting an uneven...
Description
This eye-opening documentary tells the story of the inhabitants of Seattle's International District, a unique neighborhood where Chinese, Japanese and Filipino Americans have come together as a political and social force. Archival photographs, oral interviews and period music link the past to the present. From 19th century pioneer Chin Gee Hee, a self-made millionaire and labor contractor, to Wing Luke, the first Chinese American elected to public...
Description
A Chinese-American family’s search for their roots leads them to the Mississippi Delta, where they stumble upon surprising family revelations and uncover the racially complex history of the Chinese in the segregated South. FAR EAST DEEP SOUTH presents a personal and eye-opening perspective on race, immigration, and American identity. It sheds light on the history of Chinese immigrants living in the American South during the late 1800s to mid-1900s...
17) Finding Kukan
Description
KUKAN, a landmark color film that revealed the atrocities of World War II China to audiences around the world, was the first ever American feature documentary to receive an Academy Award in 1942 and was considered lost for decades. When filmmaker Robin Lung discovers a badly damaged film print of KUKAN, she pieces together the inspirational tale of the two renegades behind the making of it -- Chinese American playwright Li Ling-Ai and cameraman Rey...
Description
This is the story of filmmaker Esther Eng, the first woman to direct Chinese-language film in the US, and the most prominent woman director in Hong Kong in the 1930s. A San Francisco native and open lesbian, her contribution to film history is sadly overlooked and her 11 feature films mostly lost. After the retirement of director Dorothy Arzner in 1943 and before Ida Lupino began directing in 1949, Eng was the only woman directing feature length films...
Description
When award-winning Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee was growing up in Missouri, she was the only Grace Lee she knew. As an adult, however, she moved to New York and then California, where everyone she met seemed to know "another Grace Lee." But why did they assume that all Grace Lees were nice, dutiful, piano-playing bookworms?. Pursuing the moving target of Asian American female identity, the filmmaker plunges into a clever, highly unscientific...
20) Hare Krishna!
Description
It's 1965 and The Western world is in turmoil. An unassuming 70-year-old Swami from India arrives in New York City alone. He carries only the firm faith in his teacher’s request: “offer spiritual wisdom to the people of the world!” This universal message resonates with more and more people, including poet Allen Ginsberg and Beatles' George Harrison whose hit song ‘My Sweet Lord’, features the Hare Krishna chant. From there, Prabhupada’s...