This raw, gutsy portrait of New York's Chinatown captures the early days of an emerging consciousness in the community. We see a Chinatown rarely depicted, a vibrant community whose young and old join forces to protest police brutality and hostile real estate developers. With bold strokes, it paints an overview of the community and its history, from the early laborers driving spikes into the transcontinental railroad to the garment workers of today.
They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.
The career of iconic and influential poet and writer Audre Lorde is seen up until death.
The film looks back at the life of a man named Oda and other Japanese Americans through the decades as they face great challenges and joys living in the United States.
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and Whites live in a complex world of cotton, work, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community is framed against the harsh realities of civil , religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare historical footage and interviews of Delta residents are combined to create this unprecedented document of inter-ethnic relations in the American South.
In two 30 minute programs that combine footage from over 20 sources, this tape focuses on educating and organizing disadvantaged communities to act on environmental issues and conditions affecting them. Part I shows how techniques used during the Civil Rights movement can be applied to deal with issues such as urban waste dumping near poor communities, fighting for clean water and air, and toxic dumping in Africa by U.S. chemical companies. Part II targets issues and organizing among Native and Mexican communities in the South West, Latinos facing homelessness in urban areas, and indigenous Amazonians fighting against the destruction of their environment by cattle ranchers.
This documentary examines the re-settlement of South-East Asian refugees in the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The film begins with a montage of riveting footage depicting the devastating effects of the war. It then unveils the mixed reception given Vietnamese refugees in the United States, from battles with local fishermen in Monterey, California, to conflicts in Philadelphia where their arrival in the city's poorest neighborhoods kindled resentment in the Black community. The film also explores their struggle to cope with life in the U.S. and maintain their identity.
In May 1974 a group of Mohawk activists reoccupied a part of their ancestral land and proclaimed it Ganienkeh. This abandoned territory was reclaimed by the Mohawks on the basis of a treaty with the State of New York enacted in the late 18th century.
The film looks at men and women of color in the U.S. Merchant Marine from 1938-1975. Through chronicling the lives of these men and women who, with a median age of 82, are beset with a host of life-threatening illnesses, the movie tells how they navigated issues of racism, disparities in the workplace, gender and familial relations.
They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics
An introduction to Kim-Trang's video series on metaphorical and physical blindness, ALETHEIA explores the interconnected issues of cosmetic surgical alteration of the eyelids, technology, language, race and gender. This video is a highly graphic examination of dominant notions of normalcy, beauty and their effects and impositions on the body. Part of the Blindness Series.
"We're making our point to the whole United States: you can fight the system; and win!" The Polish Americans of Northside, Brooklyn realized their community was under attack by the city bureaucracy: schools, hospitals, and other services has been closed or cut back and the neighborhood had began to decay. The closing of the local firehouse was the last straw. They occupied the firehouse and began a campaign to win back fire protection and revitalize their neighborhood.
In 2003, Sakia Gunn was fatally stabbed in a gay hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. She was fifteen years old and called herself an Aggressive, an homosexual woman of color who dresses in masculine attire but does not necessarily identify as either lesbian or female-to-male transgender. Dreams Deferred depicts the homophobia that caused her untimely death and questions the lack of national media coverage of the murder of a Black Gay youth.
Through archival photographs, oral histories and folk songs by Nobuko Miyamoto, this video weaves the history of 200 years of Asian women's experiences. It begins with early Asian immigration to the U.S. from China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines.
This is the first comprehensive U.S. film to explore the origins and growth of traditional Puerto Rican music. Interviews with musicians living in New York reveal how traditional music is used as a source of resistance against cultural domination. Their music is also a means by which Puerto Rican culture is maintained and transformed. The film focuses on the music of "Lexington Avenue Express", a group that has taken their music to community centers, political events, prisons and music festivals.
During the winter of 1969, the New York Transit Authority increased the public transportation fee fare from 20 cents to 30 cents--a 50% increase. Infuriated riders scrambled under turnstiles and through exit doors, refusing to pay the fare. In THE WRECK OF THE NEW YORK SUBWAYS riders and subway workers denounce the terrible conditions and constant fare increases. The film analyzes the vicious cycle of bonding the Transit Authority, which profits the banks at the expense of the taxpayers.
An analysis of how the schools by using the tracking system, exploit and oppress people in terms of class origins and how students can begin to organize.
Shot in 1969, this film documents the building anger of draftees in the U.S.military, and the growth of the anti-war movement within the military. Soldiers are interviewed and seen as they face brutalizing treatment and indoctrination in bootcamp, military training that made the war atrocities of the Vietnamese War all too possible as "just following orders". The film blasts the U.S. presence and forsees its future in Vietnam, while comparing the South and North Vietnamese armies and their reasons for fighting.
This film documents a play given at the March 28th, 1969 abortion rally by some very angry women. A beauty contestant is primed by her mother, her teacher, her boyfriend, an ad man, and a capitalist for the roles she must fulfill to be a successful winner.
A profile of a grassroots anti-war group in Boston, this short film documents some of the tactics and activities used by draft resistance groups across the country during the Vietnam War. Using the law to keep young men out of the war, this group helped over 150 people each week escape service and educate themselves and their communities about alternatives to combat.
