Documentary is happy to debut the trailer for Vicky Du’s first feature, Light of the Setting Sun (2024) . The film premiered last year at Full Frame
Asian American Media
In Third Act Tadashi Nakamura trains his lens on his father, Robert Nakamura, who is regarded as the “godfather of Asian American media.” Robert has played a key role as one of the first Japanese American filmmakers to represent the Japanese American experience through his films and images. Now in the third act of his life, he has decided to share his own. The documentary recently premiered at Sundance as part of the U.S. Documentary Competition. I spoke with Tadashi to understand how he went about shooting the film and if the process of filming Robert Nakamura was a veiled act of delaying grieving for his father.
With Film Independent, IDA hosted a work-in-progress DocuClub screening of New Wave in Los Angeles in December of 2022. While the feedback Ai and her team received from the screening was generally favorable, she nevertheless decided to overhaul the doc’s narrative in order to include intimate details from her family’s relationship with music—and each other—opening old wounds in the process, with particular emphasis on the filmmaker’s estrangement from her mother. The final version of the film premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival, and is still seeking distribution. Documentary spoke with Ai via Zoom to discuss the shift in story subject over the course of seven years of development. This interview has been edited.
Before A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network) formed its roots at IDA’s 2016 Getting Real conference, there was a decades-long history of Asian
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) announced today that documentary filmmaker and journalist Leila Abu-saada has been tapped to manage the
The intimacy and intricate care that BlackStar puts into the organization and accessibility of its annual film festival make it feel like a deeply considered project brought together by so many experienced and attentive organizers. The ability to facilitate joy and safety in a gathering can create exponential space for growth, a bending of space-time that gives folks true time to be free and travel across waves of distant visions. Amidst all the vibrancy and energy of the people of BlackStar, I tried to see as many films as possible and will mention here films that I saw for the first time with audiences. Like the talks, the focus of many of the films was survivorship—they asked how we propel ourselves through truth and ethical pursuit in an age of disintegration and global instability.
The Asian American Documentary Network, colloquially known as A-Doc, announces nine participants across two funding initiatives: the Our Stories, Our
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Now more than ever, people are
“Hawai‘i is the extinction capital and endangered species capitol of the world,” declares Kealoha Pisciotta, a Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian)
In Ben Klein and Violet Columbus’ 2022 Sundance-premiering documentary, The Exiles, the filmmakers follow filmmaker Christine Choy as she reconnects