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There’s Good Programming on TV

By Justin Lowe

In recognition of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month in May, the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) and PBS are presenting a series of programs about API communities and issues for national television broadcast.

While a dozen of the programs are repeat presentations, seven titles, including a feature film, five shorts, and Living Asia, a travel documentary, are all broadcast premieres. This month’s selection of programs explores the ongoing saga of Asian immigration, issues of racism and social justice, and what it means to become and be “American.”

John Akahoshi’s Eagle Against the Sun, set in December 1941, deftly selects a momentous turning point in both national and personal history to emphasize the unpredictability of events and the resilience of family and friends to withstand ostracism and reject racism. Helen Nakamura, a 17-year-old Japanese American high school senior, is wrapped up in a young student’s typical concerns — classes, friends and finding a date for the holiday dance. While Helen speaks Japanese at home, she is trying hard to fit in at her all-white school, but the Nakamura family still faces discrimination within their small California community.

Still from Citizen Hong Kong by Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam. Image courtesy of NAATA.

When Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor, widespread racism and resentment boil over: the Nakamura family farm is vandalized and Helen’s school locker is defaced with garbage and racial slurs. Even the efforts of a close friend to comfort Helen and defend the rights of immigrant Americans are insufficient to protect the Nakamuras from impending “relocation.”

Akahoshi wisely concludes the narrative prior to the implementation of the internment order (described in a final title card), allowing the outcome of Helen’s story to resonate with the viewer’s knowledge of internment history. Akahoshi’s 1992 USC grad student project amply demonstrates his directorial skill, as well as the film’s ambitious production design incorporating period costumes, cars and music, which together earned it a student Academy Award.

Scene from Double Solitaire, by Corey Ohama. Image courtesy of NAATA.

Director Corey Ohama approaches the internment issue from a contemporary documentary perspective as the filmmaker’s father and uncle are interviewed about their W W II childhood camp experiences in Double Solitaire. Both middle-aged men are of the opinion that Amache camp had little effect on their adult lives. This conviction drains the film of dramatic momentum, as Ohama follows these relatives to the bowling alley, restaurant or around the home in hopes of unearthing some narratively compelling material. Instead of relying on interviews with the documentary’s subjects, Ohama’s use of voiceover does little to explore the characters or heighten the film’s unremarkable depiction of an extraordinary episode in API history.

Fighting Grandpa, another student Academy Award winner, finds Greg Pak pursuing the personal documentary style to much greater advantage, charting his grandparents’ family history. Three years after his grandfather’s death, Pak asks his grandmother, relatives and himself about what the couple meant to one another. The unpleasant revelation that his grandfather was a selfish slumlord who exploited his tenants and ignored his family is tempered by Pak’s engaging and amusing grandmother, an elderly Korean emigrant whose determination and resourcefulness were largely responsible for supporting the family. Fighting Grandpa addresses issues of tradition and identity with humor and perspective, fully cognizant of the sacrifices of first-generation immigrants.

Scene from Turban, by Erika Surat Anderson. Image courtesy of NAATA.

In Turbans, Erika Surat Anderson recreates the recollections of her grandmother, a member of one of the first immigrant Indian families to arrive on the West Coast in the early-1900s. When the Singh family’s American-born children are teased and bullied at their Astoria, Oregon school, their parents must make a difficult decision whether to remove the boys’ turbans and cut their hair, symbols of their Sikh culture and faith. Narrated by the eldest daughter, the film poignantly evokes the conflicts of opportunity and sacrifice that still face many immigrants today. Using traditional music, period costumes and images of rural landscapes, Anderson crafts a convincingly naturalistic narrative that will resonate with anyone who has struggled to fit into a new culture.

Yellow is Chris Chan Lee’s 1998 LA-set Korean American coming-of-age feature about how the choices of youth influence the lives of family and friends. Sin Lee (Michael Daeho Cheung) is a high school senior preparing for college, but would rather be hanging out with his group of close friends. However, his tyrannical father (Soon Tek-oh) and patient mother run a small grocery store where a reluctant Sin is required to help out. As college decisions and graduation night approach, Sin’s feeling of financial pressure compounds when the corner store is apparently robbed one night on Sin’s watch.

Faced with the impossibility of explaining the situation to his overbearing father, Sin turns to his group of friends, who try to help recoup the funds in a single night. But the situation isn’t quite what it seems as Sin is drawn deeper into increasingly complicated plans to recover the money. Lee begins with a strong idea, but spins out too many others spread thinly across the otherwise engaging ensemble cast. As Sin, Michael Daeho Cheung wears a perpetually bewildered look that contributes to an unconvincing performance — a serious drawback compared with Soon Tek-oh’s galvanizing onscreen presence. Nonetheless, Yellow is likable enough and will probably appeal to younger audiences who face similar situations.

Repeat PBS presentations include Loni Ding’s landmark two-part series about Asian immigration, Ancestors in the Americas; Citizen Hong Kong, Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam’s portrait of pre-millennial young people in the new “Special Administrative Region;” Silence Broken, Dai Sil Kim-Gibson’s innovative account of Korean “comfort women;” Emiko Omori’s moving and controversial examination of Japanese American internment, Rabbit in the Moon; and Regret to Inform, Barbara Sonneborn’s depiction of the shattering impact that her husband’s death and the Vietnam War have had on her, as well as other American and Vietnamese war widows.

NAATA also observes Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with a presentation of “Visions in Light and Sound: Oakland Asian American Film and Video Showcase,” in conjunction with Oakland Asian Cultural Center May 25-26 as part of the first annual Asian Pacific American Arts and Heritage Festival.