Please take notes on: the use of music, the relationship between director and subject, how particular stories relevant to Asian Americans are opened up for a wider viewership. A) In what ways are Tad Nakamuras films social documentaries? B) How is the cinematic technique of collage employed?
1)
https://vimeo.com/41131994
22min, Digital Video, 2006
Directed & Edited by Tadashi Nakamura – tadashinakamura.com
PILGRIMAGE tells the inspiring story of how an abandoned WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans has been transformed into a symbol of retrospection and solidarity for people of all ages, races and nationalities in our post 9/11 world.
With a hip music track, never-before-seen archival footage and a story-telling style that features young and old, PILGRIMAGE reveals how the Japanese American community reclaimed a national experience that had almost been deleted from public understanding. PILGRIMAGE shows how the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage now has new meaning for diverse generations 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.
2)
https://vimeo.com/1547334
18 min, Digital Video, 2003 Directed & Edited by Tadashi Nakamura – tadashinakamura.com
YELLOW BROTHERHOOD is a short personal documentary about a friendship and finding community through a self-help group turned basketball team that began in the 1960s.
Filmmaker Tad Nakamura met Brett and Khi-Min when they were six years old on a community basketball team called the ‘Venice YB’. As Tad says in the film, ‘We didn’t know what YB stood for and we really didn’t care – all we cared about was having fun.’ As they grew, they learned that YB stood for ‘Yellow Brotherhood’, a self-help group formed by a gang called ‘The Ministers’ to help youth get off drugs. Only later did they realize how the tradition of Yellow Brotherhood’s dedication to personal and political development helped them through their own problems and empowered them to carry on its legacy of creating and serving community. Features never-before-seen stills and footage of Los Angeles’ Japanese American community in the 1960s and 1970s.