Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Wayward Emulsions

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from stray reels of 35mm film. Winner, Experimental Short Grand Jury Prize, Slamdance Festival 2019

  • Sworded Love

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of star-crossed swordsmen are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from a stray reel of a 35mm kung fu action film.

  • Lift Little Tokyo

    Maps and memories of Little Tokyo’s historical district of Los Angeles are uplifted via scotch tape transfers.

  • Fotdella

    Fotdella follows Ryan Baer, a Canadian street musician – influenced by San Francisco one-man-band legend Jesse Fuller – as he constructs instruments from salvaged junk and performs in markets, ragtag parades, beach towns and underground spaces. As it drifts from Lake Huron to Berlin, the film captures the solitudes and celebrations of nostalgic touring bands who recycle 20th century blues, jazz and folk cultures. Fotdella tinkers with intimate and surreal performances to present a world of hacksaws, tubas, washboards and song staged between a transnational present and an imagined past. Featuring rare archival footage of Jesse Fuller’s last public concert,…

  • For a Woman in El Salvador, Speaking

    Claudina Calderon, pregnant, with a small son, disappeared in San Salvador, abducted by government security forces. Her plight generates this filmic meditation, creating the voice of her mother through poetry, music, and murals to dramatize the story of one woman who stands for many. This film was made for the Women’s Association of El Salvador (AMES). With Susan Freundlich, sign artist, and the voices of Carolyn Forche and Yanira Chacon.

  • Queer Camp Trilogy

    The Queer Camp Trilogy is a series of experimental films exploring the hidden dimensions of queer Japanese American wartime history. This trilogy, made up of Looking For Jiro (2011), Warning Shot (2016), and On the Line (2018), was inspired by first-generation Japanese Americans who were incarcerated by the US government during World War II. These subjects left subtle yet discernible traces of same-sex intimacy or gender nonconformity in the archive, despite the enormous pressure put upon Japanese Americans to accept their imprisonment quietly, prove their patriotic loyalty, and smile for Ansel Adams during their unlawful imprisonment. I approached their enigmatic…

  • Forgotten Mother

    “Forgotten Mother” is a personal and sensitive exploration of the relationship between Alice, a black domestic worker, and Adrienne, the white child she raised. This half -hour documentary follows Adrienne’s return to her birthplace, now Zimbabwe, where she is reunited with Alice. In what was formerly white-ruled Rhodesia, it was common for black women to leave their families in rural areas to seek jobs as domestic workers in the city. These women would live on the premises of their white employers and take care of the children. Although they worked for the same family for long periods of time they…

  • Four Exiles

    This documentary spotlights the lives of four young refugees from Somalia. Faiza, Ifreah, Fuaad and Yusuf are not yet twenty, but they have already lived through a bitter civil war, suffered exile, and seen their families scattered far and wide. Now residing in Toronto, these four young people- Black, Muslim and French- speaking- are just completing their high school education. After several years on Canadian soil, how have they adapted? Do they feel impelled to alter their values and habits in order to survive? What do they think of their country of adoption? Their testimony, interlaced with sequences from a…

  • May 35

    A haunting commemoration of the Tiananmen Square uprisings made from fragments of censored archival imagery transferred onto film using razor blades and scotch tape. “May 35” speaks to the difficulty of remembering in the absence of memory, especially when June 4 histories have been censored and obscured. It is a tribute to the thousands of lives devastated by this upheaval. Sound Design: Kadet Kuhne