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11 Apr

Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Celebrating the Legacy of Robert A. Nakamura | 2026

7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
Free
Learn More at the UCLA Film and Television Archive
In person: Introduction by Associate Professor Josslyn Luckett, NYU Cinema Studies, and Professor Karen Umemoto, Helen and Morgan Chu Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Q&A with Luckett; filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura; film producer Karen L. Ishizuka, widow of Robert A. Nakamura; Celine Parreñas Shimizu, dean, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television; Renee Tajima-Peña, professor and director, UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications.

Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Center for EthnoCommunications.

This program is a continuation of Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multiracial Student Activism at UCLA, which celebrates the radical filmmaking legacy of UCLA’s affirmative action initiative, the Ethno-Communications Program (1969–1973). This iteration honors Ethno-Communications alumnus Robert A. Nakamura (1936–2025), who taught film at UCLA for over 30 years and was widely known as the “godfather of Asian American media.” A co-founder of the pioneering media organization Visual Communications, Nakamura co-directed a milestone feature-length film made by and about Asian Pacific Americans, Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980). Shaped by his internment at age six in the prison camp Manzanar during World War II, he transformed personal history into landmark films that helped change how Asian Americans are seen on-screen.

Series programmed by Associate Professor Josslyn Luckett, NYU Cinema Studies, and Public Programmer Beandrea July. Notes written by Beandrea July.