Since the Kerner Commission report in 1968, every analysis of problems in American race relations has pointed a finger at the media. The criticisms reflect our awareness that, in many ways, the media shapes our understanding of race relations as much as our direct experiences do. Notwithstanding the end of de jure segregation, most people have limited contact with people of other races and many people still live and work in homogeneous settings.

Cultural Filters

In general, our perceptions and interpretations are influenced by events filtered through our cultural experiences. These cultural filters develop from racial and ethnic background, as well as gender, sexual orientation, age, economic status, religion and geography. For the most part, we are unaware of these cultural filters and would be hard pressed to explain where we developed our notions of foods that taste good, music we enjoy, people with whom we feel comfortable and those who make us uneasy. Yet we act on these judgments daily.

Cultural filters are laden with personal values. We not only perceive the world differently from others, we presume that our perception is the most valid one. This presumption can easily lead to cross-cultural misunderstandings and racial conflict. Therefore, the first step to cross-cultural understanding is to become aware of our cultural filters. Video can play a role in attaining that goal. Several videos in this package illustrate how racial conflicts based on cultural filters emerge in the course of dialogue: The Color of Fear, Facing Racismand Skin Deep. In Whose Honor?,which deals with the use of Native American mascots for sports teams, provides a striking example of how cultural filters prevent one group from understanding the offense and anguish their actions cause another group. We also must appreciate the diversity and conflict that exists not only between groups but also within a group. Several videos explore the complexities of self-perception: Black is…Black Ain’t, Hair Pieceand A Question of Color.

The media is also shaped by the cultural filters of the people and institutions that create it. Video can play a role, but it is simply a tool and not a panacea. The independent videos in this package represent points of view and topics that generally do not appear in mass media. But their usefulness depends upon understanding the way in which their images reflect their makers’ opinions.

Video and Dialogue

We approach the question of race and dialogue from the perspective and practice of conflict resolution, which helps people create their own solutions to disputes. With a mediator’ s assistance, people who begin with positions in striking opposition to each other can identify areas in which their interests overlap. When this happens, they can better appreciate the perspectives of those with whom they have disagreed. At its most successful, conflict resolution transforms the relationship between adversaries to one in which the two sides can work together collaboratively to resolve conflicts previously seen as beyond resolution. Although conflict resolution itself works best with a trained specialist as mediator, its underlying principles can be applied to a variety of settings — community meetings, classrooms, the workplace — which are explored in the next section. Below we offer some thoughts on how these principles dovetail with the use of video in fostering a dialogue around issues of race and racial conflict.

Increasingly, diversity trainers, scholars, librarians and facilitators are using video as a way to encourage people to talk about their perceptions and assumptions about one another. Video provides participants with a common experience against which they can better define and understand their own differences. Overall, video offers four possibilities that fit perfectly with the sensibility of dispute resolution: empathy, expression, critical distance and reframing the problem.

• Empathy. The chances of success increase enormously if the parties can see the conflict from the other’ s perspective. However, the dynamics of face-to-face confrontation often work against empathy. Video frees people from the need to respond directly to the other person’ s perspective, encouraging a feeling of empathy otherwise almost impossible to accomplish. Also, video can transcend barriers created by strong group identification by pointing out similarity even within the context of difference.

• Expression. Misunderstandings brought on by racial differences tap into our deepest fears, hurts and anger. Most people cannot face the intensity of these feelings in personal confrontations, especially when they occur as part of an initial discussion. However, people can accept intensity of expression in a video. Videos also let us express feelings that we may have been afraid to express in a discussion. But these feelings are a part of the fabric of racial tensions and conflicts.

• Critical distance. People find it almost as difficult to change their own perspective as to take on someone else’ s. The need both to express and defend a position leaves little room for critical self-reflection. Anyone who has used video instruction to teach or learn how to play a sport knows how powerful it can be. In the same way that a skilled mediator can create a space in which to examine one’ s own position critically, free from the obligations of winning or defending, a video permits individuals or groups to see how others see them rather than how they want to see themselves.

• Reframing the problem. Mediation as discussion always seeks change. Even if differences cannot be resolved, participants should come away with a more accurate understanding of the nature of their differences and an appreciation of the other’ s perspective. We encourage disputants to frame their understanding of a conflict in a way that incorporates the perspectives and interests of all parties. Obviously, a video can show the perspective of one person or group. But the best video captures something truthful and moving about the views of all characters. A skilled facilitator can help us see the intertwining perspectives taken in the video and the way a problem was framed.

Although the potential for using video to encourage understanding is great, so too are the risks. Used improperly, a video can close off discussion as much as open it up. If a facilitator forgets that the video has taken a point of view and uses the work to represent truth, he denies the opportunity for an open discussion. Images are also evocative; a video might release feelings so intimate and powerful that they push participants either to withdraw from or to heighten the conflict.

A skilled mediator knows the importance of reframing an especially powerful statement made by one party in a dispute. The same holds when you use videos; do not assume that they speak for themselves or that all viewers see them in the same way. For example, The Color of Fear should not be allowed to stand on its own in a discussion of race relations or it will reproduce the distorted dynamics of miscommunication, guilt and blame that it captures so powerfully. Discussion leaders must help participants recognize how a point of view can emphasize, focus, omit and distort. A cinema classic such as Rashomon can be effective for introducing the notion of point of view and preparing participants to see images with a critical eye. But almost any documentary can be used to the same effect by noting the ways in which opposing points of view are presented, both at the level of argumentation (competing claims) and editing (juxtaposition of statements with images).

Certainly video can be an effective catalyst in an effort to discuss race and racial conflict. Any hope of resolution depends on getting to the heart of a conflict. Video helps cut through the many barriers to honesty when dealing with issues as charged as race relations.

If race is something about which we dare not speak in polite social company, the same cannot be said of the viewing of race.
Patricia J. Williams 1

Race is a paradox. Its signs appear everywhere in our media culture, while the profound ways in which race factors into the “distribution of sadness” remain hidden from view.2 Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commission reported that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”3 Today, notwithstanding the resulting affirmative action programs, African — American and Latino families are three times more likely to live below the poverty line than whites, and their median income is about 55 percent that of their white counterparts.4 Nor does education narrow the earnings gap, suggesting something else as the determining factor.5

Clearly, things have improved since the days of de jure segregation. Yet, in a 1990 Gallup poll, the “average” American thought that the U.S. population was 32 percent Black, 21 percent Hispanic, and 18 percent Jewish.6 In other words, according to this view, Anglo-Americans — not to mention Native and Asian-Americans — accounted for no more than 29 percent of the “imagined community” of the nation.7 In fact, the actual figure was precisely the opposite! Ironically, the demographic and electoral majority imagined itself to be a minority.

Two things explain this misperception. First, most Americans continue to live in racially segregated environments. Second, the mass media, which represent our major source of information about the world outside our immediate and segregated lives, play the “race card” in consequential ways. Nonwhite racial groups remain underrepresented in the mass media — both in terms of employment and portrayals — but they have also been equated with violent crime across the programming spectrum, from entertainment to the nightly news.8 So the little visibility that nonwhites receive nevertheless plays into very basic fears about personal security. Even though a black or Latino actor may now play a homicide detective as often as a violent criminal, the association of race with crime remains unchallenged.

The mass media do not cause racism, of course, but neither do they offer a value-free medium for the exchange of ideas and information. They are marketplaces and we are both their consumers and a product sold to advertisers. But in addition, as noted by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s: “The medium is the message.”9 In any modern society, four basic infrastructures allow a nation to function as a social, political and economic entity: telecommunications, transportation, energy utilities and the system of currency exchange. Each is a medium not only for moving some value across space, but also for defining that space in societal terms. Because these infrastructures are essential modes for trade and discourse, “infrastructure industries are always the focus of direct state intervention, whether by way of promotion, subsidy, or regulation.”10 Furthermore, as Robert Britt Horwitz explains, “Telecommunications is a peculiar infrastructure because it is a primary medium for the circulation of ideas and information, a realm where, in principle, political life can be discussed openly and in accordance with standards of critical reason.”11 What is the message, then, if certain racial groups are excluded from that medium or from the peculiar infrastructure of our democracy?

The message is that race defines the boundaries for our sense of nation. Since race is almost never used in the media to refer to “whites” and “Americans,” it becomes understood as a deviation from both whiteness and citizenship. Since race is used to refer to crime and criminals (with the notable exceptions of white-collar crime and serial murder, which are more racially exclusive, albeit for white men), it becomes a defining feature of that which is against the law. Since race has been one of the few ways in which we talk about class in the United States, affirmative action became coded as an isolated form of privilege rather than as a compromised response to centuries of continuing white privilege.12 As George Lipsitz demonstrates, there is a possessive investment in whiteness.13

All in all, the message from such a racially exclusive medium is one in which race is seen as an active and detrimental force in our society. Race becomes synonymous with crisis. Little wonder, then, that “Americans” felt that nonwhite racial groups made up 71 percent of the population amid a major downturn in the national economy.

But what is race? The most accurate answer is also the least satisfying: “an unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle.”14 In other words, race is not an innate truth about the human body and mind. Instead, it is a concept that participates in ongoing social, political and economic forces; as such, its meaning changes over time. Race has been used to codify various social relations on the basis of perceived biological differences: nationality (the German race), immigration policies (the Chinese Exclusion Act), citizenship (before universal suffrage), property relations (from slave versus master to redlining), intellectual capacity (mostly directed at education policy) and sex, marriage and reproduction (miscegenation and racial classification laws). Over the past four decades, however, science has replaced the concept of race with population genetics. Biological attributes are not “fixed and discrete” in the way implied by the concept of race; significantly more genetic variation occurs within than between populations, racial or otherwise.15 In short, while the biological fact of human variation remains, there is no such thing as racial purity, nor can science explain variations in human behavior across populations by means of genetic, let alone racial, differences. Such variations are cultural, reflecting a complex world very much of our own making, one in which race is less a scientific object than a contentious category within the economy, the law, the political representation system, social movements and popular culture.16

To be sure, “culture” is as fuzzy and mercurial a concept as “race.” Therefore, we must forgo answers, and begin the process of asking questions about the world beyond our immediate experience and media culture. Independent film and video offer an important alternative to the mass media, both in terms of point of view and social function. Many independent producers started on local public-affairs series in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That period saw a vibrant and broad-based media reform movement aimed at making commercial television follow its legal mandate to serve the public interest of local communities. As a result, minority public affairs series served as the birthplace and training ground for black, Latino, Asian-American and Native American “cinemas.” By the end of the decade, however, with the rise of deregulation, the producers of these films found themselves working as “independents,” offering their films to the programming margins of public television. Against great odds, these producers continue to produce new work, although distribution remains difficult. Deregulation, instead of democratizing commercial television, gave rise to a handful of global media conglomerates, which integrate broadcasting with cable, satellite service, film studios, video rental chains, publishing, music recording, sports teams, retail stores and theme parks. These conglomerates have developed joint ventures and equity interests with each other as well as with finance, computer and telecommunications corporations.17 For all the hype about the democratizing effect of the deregulation and digital revolutions, one is hard pressed to find much diversity coursing through the medium, let alone new models for social equity and intercultural dialogue.

Independent film and video can serve as an important first step in reducing our dependence on global media for what we know about the world. But it is only a first step when it comes to race, racism and racial conflict. We must do more than just view race; we must put ourselves into the picture, in large part by stepping outside our everyday life. Developers of the Viewing Race Project believe in the efficacy of dialogues across difference. The following essays provide practical information about using independent video to stimulate discussions on race. They stress that we cannot look for a quick fix, but must focus instead on uncovering the experiences, assumptions and points of view that contribute to understanding race.

Before we can resolve racial conflicts, we must understand them. The endings of two documentaries exemplify this difficult and painful fact: Renee Tajima-Peña and Christine Choy’s Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) and Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls (1997). The films both close with a scene of a mother who has lost her child to racial violence. These powerful images create an almost unbearable empathy without sentimentality. In the former, Vincent Chin’s mother responds to the acquittal of her son’s killer with disbelief that such a thing could happen in her country. The camera zooms in on her hand, clenched tighter and tighter, like a heart about to disappear. In the latter, Spike Lee interviews the mother of one of four girls killed in a church bombing in Atlanta, Georgia, in September 1963. Now, 35 years later, the mother talks about the process of letting go of her anger and opening up to compassion. In her gentle, yet slightly playful dialogue, we see both the difficulty and the possibility of living in a better world.

The videos and ideas featured in this Web site provide one avenue by which to pursue better understanding of racial conflict, cultural difference and intercultural dialogue. Through screenings and discussions, participants can begin to learn and appreciate the complex ways in which we are both different and the same. This Web site explores several practical ways in which the videos can be used to facilitate such a process in the classroom, workplace, community center and elsewhere. But the most important part will be you who use these tools to contribute to a discussion that can bridge our differences by understanding them.

1 Patricia J. Williams, Seeing a Color — Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), p. 17.

2 I borrow the phrase “distribution of sadness” from Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez, Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), see especially chapter five. The phrase refers to the way in which some racial groups are disproportionately represented among those people facing poverty, violence, crime and other social ills.

3 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Otto Kerner, Chairman (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

4 Alissa J. Rubin, “Racial Divide Widens, Study Says,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1998, sec. A, p. 18.

5 Shawn Hubler and Stuart Silverstein, “Education Doesn’t Narrow Earnings Gap for Minorities,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1993, sec. A, pp. 1, 14-15.

6 George Gallup, Jr. and Dr. Frank Newport, “Americans Show Generally Low ‘Census I.Q.’,” The Sunday Oklahoman, March 25, 1990, sec. A, p. 15.

7 For a very readable and useful account of the modern nation-state as an “imagined community,” see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991 [1983]).

8 The Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild release annual reports on minority employment. The one area where there has been significant improvement over the past three decades is in acting roles for television commercials. See also Sally Steenland, Unequal Picture: Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American Characters on Television (Washington, D.C.: National Commission on Working Women of Wider Opportunities for Women, August 1989).

9 See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding the Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994 [1964]).

10 Robert Britt Horwitz, The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 12.

11 Ibid., p. 14.

12 See John David Skretney’s comprehensive account of the development of affirmative action, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

13 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

14 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge, 1986), p. 68. Emphasis in the original.

15 Quoted phrase from Sandra Harding, ed., The “Racial” Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 8. See, in the same anthology, Frank B. Livingstone, “On the Nonexistence of Human Races,” pp. 133-141. For a useful popular discussion of the science of race, see the special issue of Discover in November 1994. The classic text on race, racism and biological determinism is Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996 [1981])

16 See Kimberle Crenshaw et al., ed., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995).

17 For an overview, see Edward S. Herman and Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (London: Cassell, 1997).

At one time, most medium- to large-sized branch libraries had one staff member responsible for adult programming and another for children. But changes in focus and staffing in public libraries over the past decade have had a negative impact on programming for adults. Now, although there are still children’s programmers in each building, there may be only one systemwide adult programmer. Often this has the effect of reducing the originality and number of programs offered. The focus of programming has also shifted to attract mass audiences, and as a result, libraries have jettisoned programs that deal with serious societal issues or that are “PBS-oriented.” At one time, libraryland hosted a wealth of experienced staff with “programming memory.” But with retirements and institutional priority shifts, much of this expertise has evaporated. Today’s staff wear too many hats to devote much time to programming. As a result, newer librarians show a reluctance, even a fear, of programming. Although nothing can guarantee success (short of a megacelebrity in attendance), specific guidelines can increase quality programming. I write from the perspective of the public library, but programmers in any situation, from community groups to discussion groups, can benefit from the following suggestions.

• General advice. Start simply at first. If you are new to programming or if your library system is returning to programs after a long absence, you should try a single, focused program rather than an ambitious series. Although a series is sexier and easier to publicize, you may find yourself rethinking strategies mid-project — and this can be stressful. At the start, test out your abilities and your audience on a single program. You always learn unexpected things when you interact with the public!

Program ideas can spring from several sources: the programmer, the needs of the public or the library administration. Whatever the impetus, the key to successful programming is planning. Planning enables you to identify potential roadblocks and advantages. The main elements that I consider in planning are: goal of the program, content, logistics, publicity, tie-ins, funding and evaluation.

• Goal. Why are you having this program? Identifying the goal affects the way you tackle and evaluate the program (and, in turn, how you are evaluated by your audience). For example, if you need to demonstrate that you can reach large numbers of your patrons, you should plan a popular program rather than a narrowly focused and controversial one.

• Content. Once you define your goal, shape the program to achieve it. You have the choice of a simple screening or an elaborate one. In either case, try to share the load. If you plan well but don’t feel comfortable in front of audiences, find a speaker, facilitator or panel to take the focus away from you. If you are good with details but shaky on program shaping, ask for help from individuals or groups who know about your subject, and engage a panel that will be involved from the start.

You can find speakers or potential panelists through local universities and community colleges, community groups or churches and national organizations, such as the ACLU and NAACP. Check with your state or local government. In Florida, for example, the Florida Endowment for the Humanities has a list of speakers who do not charge fees. Some groups may provide grants for speakers who participate in community-oriented programs. Check your local newspaper. Experts cited in recent articles related to your topic may be willing to participate in your program. Sometimes a reporter will agree to moderate a discussion on the topic. Remember to aim for balance. If your topic is controversial, offer space to reasonable objectors. You don’t have to give a microphone to every oddball in your county, but try for a reasonable spectrum of opinion. You will, of course, take guidance from your institution.

In compiling this publication, we thought it important to have those who use video in different contexts write about their experiences in the field. Screening a tape isn’t hard; initiating and moderating a constructive discussion is more challenging.

With this publication, we hope to encourage teachers, librarians, counselors, affirmative action officers and lay people to organize discussions around race relations and diversity using video as a catalyst. We believe that the experiences of Lauren Kucera and Milton Reynolds (diversity trainers), Debbie Wei (teacher) and Laura Vural and Rachel Castillo (video instructors for young people) will provide useful suggestions for anyone interested in using video to organize such a forum.

Why video? Television shapes our perceptions and opinions of each other. Through nightly news reports and other shows we garner information about other people, cultures and places. Television even shapes our notions of ourselves and informs us about our world. As we become more dependent on this medium, which provides an essentially solitary experience, we engage in less and less public discussion. We no longer have public spaces where people gather to debate ideas and opinions. Nightline, The Jerry Springer Show and Oprah have become acceptable substitutes for public discourse. As a result, we have less opportunity to hear other points of view. Some of our opinions have become based more on misconceptions than informed analysis.

I recently watched a television documentary on PBS about a visit by the Harlem Boy’s Choir to Australia. Upon the choir’s arrival, the Australians, mostly other young men, began mimicking “home boys.” Their knowledge of young black men was limited to the body language and cadence of rap stars. They were regurgitating the images they had been fed.

If the Harlem Boy’s Choir created a film or video about themselves, what would they emphasize? A pair of our writers, Vural and Castillo of Truce: Rise and Shine, a youth development program, deal with issues of self-representation in the media. They convened a group of young people to watch the film Secrets and Lies and talk about race and identity. When asked to define themselves, the young people’s responses were complex and went beyond skin color and cultural influences. Programmers, educators and facilitators can use the films in Viewing Race both to talk about the many ways people define themselves beyond race and skin color, and to talk about the way others define them based on race and skin color.

Kucera and Reynolds, diversity trainers in San Francisco, provide us with a logistical framework within which to conduct forums on race. As diversity trainers working with corporations, nonprofits, agencies and schools, they share their strategies for organizing and moderating screenings and discussions centered on race and difference.

In their articles about youth programming, Vural, Castillo and Wei discuss the need to teach young people how to think and view video critically. These skills involve questioning the film, video or text’s point of view, finding different ways to view an issue and validating personal experience.

The goal of Viewing Race is to couple viewing with discussion. We plan to unwrap the box labeled “race” and examine some of its contents: History (Bridge to Freedom (1965), The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry), fear (The Color of Fear), privilege (A Question of Color), violence (Who Killed Vincent Chin?, 4 Little Girls), and love (An American Love Story). We hope these videos allow viewers to come away with a better understanding of the differences and similarities between us, ultimately giving depth, context and clarity to the issues surrounding race.

Senior Editor Chon Noriega interviews three filmmakers about their experiences in making independent films dealing with issues of race or cultural difference: Laura Simón (Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary), Renee Tajima-Peña (My America and Who Killed Vincent Chin?) and Sandra Sunrising Osawa (Lighting the 7th Fire).
Many of the topics and themes broached by independent filmmakers are either absent from the mass media or not given context and breadth when they are presented. Independent filmmakers tackle issues and provide perspectives that frequently challenge us to see from a different angle. We wanted to give readers of this publication the opportunity to hear independent filmmakers discuss their experiences working outside of mainstream institutions and the motivations behind their work.

Chon Noriega (CN): It is important to provide the context of independent productions dealing with issues of race or cultural difference. By context, I mean the origin of these videos, how they get made and what filmmakers are trying to achieve. Let’s start with Sandy. Can you share your experiences in terms of public affairs television in the mid-1970s?

Sandra Osawa (SO): It really wasn’t public affairs; it was an NBC program that afforded us for the first time, as Native American people, an opportunity to produce, direct and write. We had our set right next to the Tonight Show. I remember at one point the Art Director wanted our host to wear a feathered headdress. He thought it was quite an offer. We were really confounded at how to turn him down and still keep our jobs. But we managed to do just that. Luckily, the program had such a small budget that we were allowed to do our own thing. This reminds me of what can happen when you let people have an opportunity to work because for so long we’ve been restricted in terms of not being able to tell our own stories.

Renee Tajima-Peña (RTP): I want to add to what Sandy was saying about doing what you want to do and thriving. This holds for all filmmakers of color. The upside of being an outsider is that most people ignore you, which provides a certain amount of freedom. When I got out of college, I applied for internships at every network and every studio on earth. Nobody even gave me a call back to do a non-paid internship. When I was coming up, I didn’t have the sense of “My God, I’ve got to get to Sundance. I’ve got to get to film school.” I didn’t even go to film school. I did what I wanted to do and figured out the way I wanted to make films as opposed to having a canon imposed on me. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I ended up in Chinatown making videos.

CN: There seems to be a consensus that it’s important to make films and have them seen, either by one’s own community or the world. This is something that exists almost entirely outside of the film schools or the networks or the studios. How does that contribute to what you try to do as filmmakers?

Laura Simón (LS): I didn’t go to film school either. Fear and Learning at Hoover Elementary was a response to the race situation I saw in front of me [as an elementary schoolteacher in Los Angeles].

SO: Years ago, when I worked in Neah Bay, Washington, where the Makah reservation is, I tried to find good films about Native Americans. At the time, we had decided to have movie night as part of a recreation program. But I couldn’t find anything here in this country, so I started to order from Canada. That experience motivated me to figure out a way to tell our own stories. When I started the HeadStart program in my own tribe, I found there was also nothing relevant for younger children.

RTP: I first got into filmmaking because of people like Sandy and filmmakers in the Ethno-Communications program at UCLA who pioneered a whole generation of films made by people of color. I was in high school when Eddie Wong, Bob Nakamura and Duane Kubo worked in Ethno-Communications with Sandy. They made several films. One was Wong Sin Saang, about Eddie’s father, a laundry man in San Francisco’s Chinatown. They brought the films to a community center in my town. It was like seeing an alien land in Area 51. I had no concept that an Asian-American could have anything to do with filmmaking behind the camera — even on-screen — other than Flower Drum Song. So hearing Sandy tell her story about seeing this vacuum and actually starting something herself made me realize that it’s true in many different communities.

CN: Part of what everyone is saying is that there is no lack of images about racial groups in this country. The issue is who frames them and what they convey. In different ways, you’re all involved in part of a response to that that’s using the same medium.

Renee, you take being American as a vantage point, rather than an Asian-American or member of a minority group. That’s a different approach from the original Asian-American filmmakers who inspired you.