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.