History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige
Essential Documentaries
•
32m
Directed by Rea Tajiri | 32 mins | 1991
A groundbreaking, highly influential work by the Chicago-born visual artist and filmmaker Rea Tajiri, this poetic tapestry of the personal and the political reckons with the internment of some 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II, among them members of the director’s own family. Drawing upon images in mainstream media, family memories, photographs, and Super 8 footage, Rea reflects on the difficulty of representing the past, particularly one that has been elided from the historical record.
Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.
Up Next in Essential Documentaries
-
I'm British But...
Directed by Gurinder Chadha | 30 mins | 1990
The vivacious, Bhangra-infused debut of "Bend it Like Beckham" (2002) writer-director Gurinder Chadha takes an expansive look at what it means to be British through the eyes of second-generation migrants from Asia. From the participants’ heterogeneous ... -
Land of Silence and Darkness
Directed by Werner Herzog | 85 mins | 1971
After a childhood accident caused her an eventual loss of vision at 15 and hearing at 18, Fini Straubinger spent the next 30 years of life bedridden. But by age 56, when she became the subject of Herzog’s documentary feature, she had found her inner stre... -
Lessons of Darkness
Directed by Werner Herzog | 54 mins | 1992
Saddam Hussein ordered the withdrawal from Kuwait at the end of February, 1991, bringing the Gulf War to a nominal close—but the Iraqi troops would wreak a trail of destruction in their retreat: implementing a scorched earth policy, they set fire to arou...
