Center for Asian American Media
Fishbowl
From the late Kayo Hatta, the director of the award-winning 'Picture Bride,' comes FISHBOWL, a comical coming-of-age tale based on Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s novel, 'Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers.' Set in Hilo, Hawai’i during the 1970s, 13-year-old Lovey is an outsider with an overactive imagination who must deal with not only a bad perm, but also the snotty yet seemingly perfect leader of the most popular clique at school and her menacing teacher who ridicules her for...
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Mighty Warriors of Comedy
Hailed as one of the most devastatingly funny comedy troupes of the past decade, the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors are an audacious Asian American sketch comedy group from San Francisco. Their material tackles socio-political issues with a hilarious combination of irreverence and seriousness, taking their audiences on a wild ride through topics as varied as female circumcision and cultural identity to sports and hero-worshiping. Most people in mainstream America, however, have...
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Out of the Poison Tree
The antidote is truth.
On the eve of the long-awaited Khmer Rouge trial, an American survivor of the genocide returns to Cambodia hoping to unlock the mystery of her father's disappearance in 1975. Thida Buth Mam's quest intersects with many silent voices: widows, survivors from remote villages, monks and even former perpetrators. Her search for the truth stirs up the fractured pieces of one family's nightmare, unearths an unimaginable heartbreak and ultimately shines...
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The Last Ghost of War
At Tu Du Hospital in Saigon, babies in a special unit have enlarged heads or are missing limbs. Nguyen Thuy Linh, a lovely 12-year-old girl who was born without arms, writes with her feet. Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, she is among several million victims of Agent Orange. In THE LAST GHOST OF WAR, we meet victims who are plaintiffs in a class action suit against 32 U.S. chemical companies.
These Vietnamese victims are seeking compensation and justice. The...
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The Cats of Mirikitani
"Make art not war" is Jimmy Mirikitani's motto. This 80-year-old Japanese American artist was born in Sacramento and raised in Hiroshima, but by 2001 he is living on the streets of New York with the twin towers of the World Trade Center still ominously anchoring the horizon behind him. What begins as a simple verite portrait of one homeless man will become a rare document of daily life in New York in the months leading up to 9/11. How deeply these two stories will be...
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Bittersweet Roots: The Chinese in California's Heartland
The California Delta, in the heart of the state, is the only place in America where the Chinese have maintained a sustained presence for nearly a century and a half. Here, immigrants from China transformed swampland into one of the richest agricultural regions on earth. This is their story, about how they came and thrived despite hardship and discrimination, an experience that has been both bitter and sweet.
The story begins in the 1850s, when thousands of Chinese...
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Pilgrimage
Two young Japanese Americans set out to find an obscure place called Manzanar in the California desert, in 1969. This was one of ten sites where over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated during World War II. This rediscovery then became a “pilgrimage” and the first public event in the U.S. that called attention to the reality of these camps.
With a hip music track, never-before-seen archival footage and a story-telling style that features both old and...
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A Dream in Doubt
Four days after the 9/11 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down at his Phoenix area gas station by a man named Frank Roque. To Roque, Balbir Sodhi’s beard and turban—articles of his Sikh faith—symbolized the face of America’s new enemy. Seeking retaliation for 9/11, Roque killed Sodhi and went on to shoot at a Lebanese American man and fire multiple rounds of ammunition outside an Afghan American family’s home.
A DREAM IN DOUBT follows Rana Singh Sodhi,...
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Little Manila
Known as “The City of Gold,” Stockton became a major hub for Filipino immigrants coming to the U.S at the turn of the 20th century. By the 1930s, this lively area had the largest population of Filipinos outside of the Philippines. Many worked as farm laborers traveling up and down the west coast harvesting fruit and vegetables in California, Oregon, and Washington and then working in the canneries in Alaska during the winter. But Stockton was where Filipinos could always...
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Sikhs in America
Beautifully shot in high-definition video, this documentary follows Sikh families in Yuba City, Sacramento, Fremont, and Livingston, California. SIKHS IN AMERICA provides a portrait of what it means to be a Sikh in the U.S. and examines their journey from immigrant farm worker to business owner within a single generation. The documentary shows how they balance their cultural traditions while also participating in the American dream.
The viewer is allowed a glimpse at this...
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