History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige

Groundbreaking and haunting, Rea Tajiri’s 1991 film History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. Ruminating on the difficult nature of representing the past — especially a past that exists outside traditional historic accounts — Tajiri blends interviews, memorabilia, a pilgrimage to the camp where her mother was interned, and the story of her father, who had been drafted pre-Pearl Harbor and returned to find his family’s house removed from its site.

This screening of History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige is part of the CAAMFest Retrospective Spotlight program, which recognizes an Asian American filmmaker who has a substantial body of work, as well as a new film that furthers that legacy.

Film Details

Director: Rea Tajiri
Year: 1991
Running time: 32 min.
Country/Region: United States
 
Three additional short films will be shown at the beginning of this program. Filmmakers Chisato Hughes, Natalie Murao, and Evelyn Hang Yin are expected to attend for a post-screening Q&A.

Additional Films

Many Moons

In this hybrid documentary/fiction film, Chinese community members of Humboldt County search for the lone exception to the 1885 expulsion and sixty-year enforced exclusion of “Chinamen” — Charlie Moon, whose descendants are Native tribal members.

Director: Chisato Hughes
Year: 2022
Running time: 22 min.
Country: United States
 
Let Me Take You Home

In a dreamscape of projections, Ah Yeh recounts the tale of how he came to this country and the hardships he faced.

Director: Evelyn Hang Yin
Year: 2022
Running time: 6 min.
Country: United States
 
Blue Garden

Blue Garden is a hybrid doc animation that retells the history of a Japanese Canadian fisherman during the World War II internment. The film explores how trauma can fester and family stories can remain unspoken for generations. However, through the participatory nature of filmmaking, the younger generation is able to reconcile their grief and feel empowered to tell their family history.

Director: Natalie Murao
Year: 2022
Running time: 5 min.
Country: Canada