Asian Americans / Pilgrimage

The UCLA Film & Television Archive presents classic film and contemporary cinema in the Hammer's Billy Wilder Theater.

Part of the Image Movers: UCLA Asian American Studies Center 50th Anniversary Film Festival, this screening includes two short films followed by a sneak preview of an episode from PBS’s upcoming Asian Americans television series. 

Librarian and activist Florante Ibanez, filmmaker Grace Lee, and producer Renee Tajima-Peña will appear in-person.

This unscripted web series empowers Asian American kids and all kids of color to embrace their identities, fight for social justice, and be the revolution. In this episode, the Radical Cram School kids tell the life story of Detroit activist and American revolutionary Grace Lee Boggs, as they recall it. (2020, dir. Kristina Wong, digital, color, English, 5 min.)

Pilgrimage tells the inspiring story of how an abandoned WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans has been transformed into a symbol of retrospection and solidarity for people of all ages, races and nationalities in the post-9/11 world. With a hip soundtrack, never-before-seen archival footage, and a storytelling style that features young and old, Pilgrimage reveals how the Japanese American community reclaimed a national experience that had almost been deleted from public understanding. (2006, dir. Tadashi Nakamura, digital, color, 22 min.)

This opening program centers on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) activism and documenting the community. It features a sneak preview of an episode from PBS’s upcoming Asian Americans, a groundbreaking public television five-part series set to premiere in May 2020. The series examines what the 2010 U.S. Census identifies as the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the United States. A rich array of archival footage, oral histories and interviews, and current news research presents a multi-faceted perspective on how the Asian American experience has been predominantly shaped by the long-term, community-focused work in equity and inclusion for accurate media representation, social and economic mobility, and human rights for all. Led by a team of Asian American filmmakers, including Academy Award-nominated series producer Renee Tajima-Peña, Asian Americans examines the significant role of Asian Americans in shaping American history and identity, from the first wave of Asian immigrants in the 1850s and identity politics during the social and cultural turmoil of the 20th century to modern refugee crises in a globally connected world. (2020, dir. DCP, black & white and color, 60 min.)