Passion for Justice – The Films of Rea Tajiri
J-Sei At the Movies – Meet filmmaker Rea Tajiri
Special Guests: Audee Kochiyama-Holman and Eddie Kochiyama
Friday, June 11, 5:30 pm
With a multitude of films and a mastery of layering images and fragments of memories, award-winning filmmaker and media artist Rea Tajiri continues to push the edges of her craft to capture the stories, often unspoken and forgotten. To begin our evening program, we will chat with Rea to hear about her journey as a filmmaker and take a peek at some of her latest work. Then we will hear from the Kochiyama family on the legacy of their mother Yuri Kochiyama and the passion for justice that lives on. After the talk, we will have a chance to see the film, Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice.
RSVP with “June Movie Night” in the subject line.
You’ll receive Zoom information prior to the event.
Featured films
- Wataridori – Birds of Passage (2018) was a multi-site installation project in Philadelphia mapped and enlivened forgotten traces of local Japanese American history linked in a series of locations around the city.
- Wisdom Gone Wild is Tajiri’s current documentary-in-progress that chronicles her sixteen year journey of elder care for her mother who had dementia, and illuminates their lifelong passion for the arts and the language of the elders.
- Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1993) is a biography in political and social context of Yuri Kochiyama, an Asian American woman and humanitarian civil rights activist who first became aware of social injustice in the United States during her time in a Japanese-American interment camp during World War II. She stresses the need for members of all races and ethnicities to work together for common goals, and for a fundamental change in political power structures. 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.
About the Filmmaker
REA TAJIRI is a filmmaker and visual artist who was born in Chicago, Illinois. She earned her BFA and MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts in post-studio art. Her ground-breaking, award-winning film, digital video and installation work, has been supported by numerous grants, fellowships and artistic residencies, has been exhibited widely in museums, on television and in international film festivals. Poetic, subtly layered and politically engaged, her work advances the exploration of forgotten histories, multi-generational memory, landscape and the Japanese American experience.
Her experimental documentary History and Memory for Akiko & Takashige, and feature film Strawberry Fields have influenced a generation of filmmakers, leading to their inclusion in Asian American, Cinema Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies curricula in the US. Her recent multi-site installation project Wataridori-birds of Passage (2018) in Philadelphia mapped and enlivened forgotten traces of local Japanese American history linked in a series of locations around the city. Her feature documentary Lordville (2014) probed the material and immaterial traces of an upstate New York town’s history. Her current documentary-in-progress is Wisdom Gone Wild. The film chronicles her sixteen year journey of elder care for her mother who had dementia, and illuminates their lifelong passion for the arts and the language of the elders.
As an advocate of emerging artists and directors, Rea co-founded The Workshop, an incubator for Asian American film directors in New York City. She has taught extensively throughout the U.S. as a visiting professor and artist-in-residence. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Film Media Arts Department at Temple University where she teaches documentary production.
J-Sei Movie Night Bento
June 11th Movie Night
Zangi (Hokkaido fried chicken) Yuba and roasted Mushroom salad and ginger/garlic rice with fresh peas
Click on the button below to place your order. The price is $18 for the bento.
You can pick up your meal at the selected pick up time at J-Sei on Friday, June 11th. Please remember to wear a mask and observe social distance protocol. Thank you!
To order: When you click on the button above, it will take you directly to a pop-up order form on the My Friend Yuji webpage, where you first select a pickup time. In the next window, click anywhere inside the box frame to open another pop-up and select the number of bento you want to order, then click on “Add item” to close the pop-up. Click the “View order” bar at the bottom to confirm your order and click “Continue to payment” to sign in and pay for your order.
Support J-Sei At the Movies
Thanks to you, J-Sei At the Movies recently celebrated its third anniversary! We look forward to more creative programming with educational and inspiring Japanese and Japanese American films. We are especially grateful for the up close and personal chats with filmmakers as we learn so much from the exchange.
We love having a growing and enthusiastic audience. You are the best! We welcome any donations to help us offset costs for Movie Night. Thanks for considering this.
Miyamoto vividly describes her early life in the racialized atmosphere of Hollywood musicals and then her turn toward activism as an Asian American troubadour with the release of A Grain of Sand—considered to be the first Asian American folk album. Her narrative intersects with the stories of Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, influential in both Asian and Black liberation movements. She tells how her experience of motherhood with an Afro-Asian son, as well as a marriage that intertwined Black and Japanese families and communities, placed her at the nexus of the 1992 Rodney King riots—and how she used art to create interracial solidarity and conciliation.
My favorite Ozu title is “I Was Born But…” I was born but…WWII disrupted my life. I spent my early years in Poston Concentration Camp. Then a truck farm. Then came to SFSU where I studied filmmaking. I began my career as a filmmaker and cinematographer in 1968, when there were few camerawomen and fewer still Asian American camerawomen in the US. My first job was as cinematograher/editor on the KQED-TV program, “Newsroom.” Since 1972 I have freelanced as a cinematographer on many award-winning projects as well as producing my own. In 1991 I wrote and directed the highly acclaimed drama, Hot Summer Winds, based on two short stories by Hisaye Yamamoto, for American Playhouse. In 1999, my documentary/memoir, Rabbit in the Moon, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was broadcast on POV, and won a National Emmy and numerous other awards. At Sundance I was awarded the Best Documentary Cinematography for Rabbit in the Moon and for Academy Award nominee Regret to Inform. In 2020, I directed and edited Vanishing Chinatown, The World of The May’s Photo Studio. In my sunset years, I continue to make documentaries like Then Becoming Now.
