VC Connect #20: The Stories Behind the Picture

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. Click here to watch the complete showcase.

Monday Nite VC: The Stories Behind the Picture

In anticipation of Visual Communications’ 50th anniversary celebration PAST//FORWARD, we are pleased to bring back a series of documentaries built around the vast holdings of the VC Archives, compiled, lensed, and edited by VC co-founders Duane Kubo and Eddie Wong. Accompanied by revealing interviews with many of the subjects who were captured in their younger days by VC founders and core staffers, these short films provide a glimpse into the spirit and vitality of the burgeoning Asian American Movement in all its forms.

Join us for a special Monday Nite VC conversation on Monday, November 16, 2020 at 5pm PT featuring VC co-founder Eddie Wong, longtime community activist Mike Murase, and other special guests as they discuss the VC Archives and its ongoing legacy of capturing the visual memories of the Asian American Movement.

Missed the conversation? Watch the recording below!

Funding for VC CONNECT has been provided by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic stabilization plan of 2020.

ANDREA LING YAMASAKI
As part of VC’s documentation of LA Chinatown, Duane Kubo took a photograph of seven-year-old Andrea Ling as she stood outside her grandparents’ market. Today, Andrea is a mother and Orange County School Board member. In this video, she revisits Chung King Road and describes the values she learned while growing up in Chinatown.

ASIAN AMERICANS AGAINST VIETNAM WAR
UCLA student activist, GIDRA founder, and anti-war activist Mike Murase describes the organizing effort on the first Asian American protest rally against the Vietnam War, which was held in Little Tokyo on January 27, 1970. Murase also describes how the Asian American contingent explicitly targeted racism and imperialism in later city-wide anti-war demonstrations.

CHUNG KING ROAD AND L.A. CHINATOWN
As part of VC’s ongoing documentation work, we took hundreds of photographs of community events, street life, festivals and ceremonies. VC co-founder Eddie Wong comments on the significance of capturing this moment in time. Today, Chung King Road is vastly different with stores replaced by art galleries.

HISTORIC MANILATOWN
Long the center of the Filipino American community in Los Angeles, the Temple Street/Downtown L.A. area featured community centers, youth groups, and stores. Casimiro Tolentino describes how immigrant families such as his own drew spiritual and material sustenance from Historic Manilatown.

MRS. KIM AND THE KOREAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY
Mrs. Kim, a minister and Korean language instructor, was the focal point of a profile in the VC educational booklets “Asian American People and Places.” Community leader Jerry Yu sets the context faced by his immigrant family in the early 1970s when the Korean American community was just beginning its growth.

PHILIP VERA CRUZ: UNLIMITED
Linda Mabalot and the VC crew spent many hours interviewing legendary farmworker organizer Philip Vera Cruz in preparation for the video documentary MANONG, and as background for the narrative feature QUIET THUNDER. Walt Louie edited this excerpt from the interviews.

THE PIONEER CENTER AND HANAMI
Community workers Mo Nishida and Jim Matsuoka convey the deep joy the Issei felt upon the annual excursion to view wildflowers. These color slides taken by Robert Nakamura and Alan Ohashi display some of VC’s finest photographic work.

SACRAMENTO RIVER DELTA
Filmmaker Eddie Wong describes how a location production class at UCLA Film School/Ethno-Communications Program led to a documentary film focused on the Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino communities in Locke, Walnut Grove, and Isleton, California.

SAMOAN AMERICANS IN CARSON, CA
June Pouesi, director of the Office of Samoan Affairs, describes the waves of immigration from American Samoa that led to the development of the Samoan community. She also comments on VC’s photo documentation of work, cultural performances, and youth activities.

STEVE TATSUKAWA WAS A YELLOW PEARL
VC Executive Director Steve Tatsukawa left us at a young age—35—in 1984. The inimitable jokester could rock out at a Grateful Dead concert just as passionately as he could challenge his colleagues at KCET to program for more people of color. In this tribute, Mia Yamamoto and Band wrote an original song to spotlight this unique merry prankster and the impact he had on all of us from VC, Gidra, and the movement community.

THE STOREFRONT
Activist and counselor Sandy Maeshiro describes the intense experience of building a progressive Japanese American and African American community center in the Crenshaw/Senshin district of Los Angeles.

YVONNE WONG NISHIO AND THE LITTLE FRIENDS PLAYGROUP
Educator and activist Yvonne Wong Nishio describes the founding of L.A. Chinatown’s first parent-led childcare center in the 1970s. The group engaged in public campaigns for city funding and expand services for working class, immigrant parents.

VAN TROI BRIGADE AT NISEI WEEK
VC photographers Eddie Ikuta, Alan Ohashi, Dennis Kuba, and Duane Kubo provide panoramic coverage of the historic march of Asian American and Sansei youth to protest the Vietnam War within the Nisei Week parade of 1972. Activists Scott Nagatani, Eddie Kochiyama, Mary Kao, and Pam Eguchi, who participated in the march, recount the impact it had on their lives.