VC Connect #3: A Call to Action

Welcome to VC CONNECT, an online destination through which just some of the hundreds of films and media productions created by Visual Communications can be found for your enjoyment. Featured films include some of our VC Classics, as well as films made in the Digital Histories production program for older adults and the Armed With a Camera Fellowship for Emerging Artists. Each week, we’ll roll out a new batch, specially themed for our audience’s diverse cinematic palate. Our focus this week is advocacy. Click here to watch the complete showcase.

A Call to Action

“Advocacy cinema” has always been a hallmark of Visual Communications’ role within the Asian American Movement, and this selection of short works live up to that lofty legacy. Featuring films from both the Armed With a Camera and Digital Histories programs,  a “call to action” is indeed apropos for the times we currently live in.

Thank you to the following sponsors for their ongoing support of the Armed With a Camera Fellowship: Sony Pictures Entertainment, SAGindie, West One Music Group, Final Draft, Los Angeles County Arts & Culture, Flash Cuts, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Writers Guild of America West.

Thank you to the following sponsors for their ongoing support of the Digital Histories program: Sony Pictures Entertainment, West One Music Group, Keiro, Union Bank, and Aratani Foundation.

A MATTER OF TRUTH (2017) by Steve Nagano
The government’s propaganda film on the evacuation of Japanese Americans to America’s concentration camps is juxtaposed against the testimonies of incarcerees given at the 1981 Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. The film raises the questions of “Who do you believe?” and “What is the truth?”

AN AMERICAN STORY: “GO FOR BROKE” (2006) by Anna Nagai
The filmmaker discovers a hidden monument in a parking lot and talks with Dr. William Sato about his life and the Japanese American War Memorial.

THE COGMILL KIDS (2017) by Alice Hsieh
Each year, people are abducted from their homelands and taken to the Cogmill, where they work as laborers to provide power for an island city up above. Aji, the most recent addition to the Cogmill, must navigate through captivity whilst trying to survive under its oppressive conditions.

MY UNCLE’S LEGACY: A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME (2006) by Robert Anderson
This film explores how the filmmaker’s uncle has served as a role model and mentor by chronicling his life’s accomplishments as a photojournalist during the Chicano Movement.

PEACE BEGINS WITH ME AND YOU (2005) by Megumi Nishikura
An exploration of how the filmmaker found her passion for peace from early childhood to present day, and her vision of the world when each individual makes a commitment to creating peace.

RAISING EYEBROWS (2010) by Preeti Sharma
Two popular threading salons for South Asian customers and workers holds differing stories of fear and courage, as the fight against exploitation at one salon is used to highlight the partnership that sustains the other.

SHUT IT ALL DOWN (2017) by Lya Lim
In 2015, one of the wells at a gas storage facility in Porter Ranch blew out and spewed hazardous gas and chemicals. This film chronicles how the residents of Porter Ranch coped with the health effects and aftermath of the environmental crisis.

SPEAKING OUT! (2013) by Steve Nagano
Drawn from the 157 testimonies before the Government’s Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in Los Angeles in 1981, this film captures the emotion, loss, pain, suffering, and fortitude of Japanese Americans incarcerated in America’s concentration camps during World War II.

WALKING THE TALK (2019) by Frances Ito and Steve Nagano
The current President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, Ann Burroughs shares how being a young activist against apartheid in South Africa shaped her stand against injustice.

THE WATTS RIOTS – DAYS OF RAGE, FEAR, AND SURVIVAL (2016) by Gerry Chow
A family discusses their experiences during the Watts Riots of 1965.