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ROBERT NAKAMURA, a pathbreaking filmmaker, is often referred to as “the Godfather of Asian American media.” Nakamura was a founder of Visual Communications, the nation’s oldest community-based media group, and was among the first to document the experiences of Japanese Americans in film. His personal documentary Manzanar (1972) recounted his memories of incarceration in an American concentration camp during World War II, and was selected for major retrospectives on documentary at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Film Forum, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. After working almost three decades at UCLA teaching Asian American filmmaking in the Film and Television Department, Nakamura founded the Center for EthnoCommunications at UCLA in 1996, serving as the Director of the program until 2012.

 

Video Information:

Interviewer: Karen Ishizuka
Producer: Janet Chen
Editor: Marnie Salvani
Credits: Janet Chen, Lian Mae Tualla, Marnie Salvani, Kenyon Chan, Helen and Morgan Chu
Contributors: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications