Tadashi Nakamura made his cinematic debut as a new child, in his father Robert’s 1980 movie Hito Hata: Elevate the Banner — the primary movie created by and about Asian Individuals. Co-directed with Duane Kubo, it chronicles the tumultuous lifetime of a Japanese-American man performed by the mononymous actor Mako, and was partially knowledgeable by the elder Nakamura’s private expertise of being imprisoned on the Manzanar focus camp alongside together with his household throughout World Battle II. The filmmaker would go on to revisit internment and its legacy a number of occasions in his work, together with his 1972 quick “Manzanar,” which depicts his recollection of his time there, and 1995’s One thing Robust Inside, which includes dwelling films shot inside the camp.
Nakamura is called the “Godfather of Asian-American Media” due to his groundbreaking movie work, his affect as a longtime professor on the College of California Los Angeles, and his co-founding of Visible Communications, a nonprofit that develops Asian-American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists. However within the new documentary Third Act (2025), premiering as a part of this yr’s Sundance Movie Pageant, his son takes on the mantle of director whereas the elder Nakamura displays on his life, work, and up to date Parkinson’s analysis. Forward of the competition, we met with Tadashi over Zoom to debate the movie’s lengthy shoot, the way it introduced him and his father nearer collectively, and the way it spurred him to see Manzanar in a brand new method. This interview has been edited and condensed for time and readability.
Robert A. Nakamura in Third Act (2025), directed by Tadashi Nakamura (photograph by Robert A. Nakamura)
Hyperallergic: Is your loved ones protected from the fires in Los Angeles?
Tadashi Nakamura: We’re protected. We’re in Culver Metropolis, on the west aspect. My home is about 5 minutes away from my mother and father’, so I’m in a position to see them typically.
H: The fires have additionally been destroying or endangering cultural establishments, together with archives. Is your dad’s work protected?
TN: A few of his movies are on the UCLA Movie & Tv Archive, a pair are within the Academy Archive, however all his pictures and negatives are at his home, and never in a fireproofed location. So yeah — that was one of many issues that crossed my thoughts. On the great finish, due to Third Act, we had somebody scanning his negatives full-time for 2 years, so we now have quantity of it digitally archived, however nonetheless didn’t end. Once we restored “Manzanar,” we used a workprint as a result of the unique adverse was misplaced in a flood at Visible Communications a very long time in the past — so issues have already been misplaced. It sadly takes one thing this horrible to get you critically interested by it. Now the fires have compelled us to make plans and take into consideration the probabilities.
H: Within the movie, you comment that it felt inevitable that you’d finally make a film about your father. What particularly made you go forward with this challenge now?
TN: It was resulting from what we now know to be the early signs of Parkinson’s. He retired round his early 70s, and I seen him slowing down in his mid-70s. He’d at all times suffered from despair, nevertheless it had gotten actually dangerous. We chalked it as much as his post-retirement life — somebody who’s been making movies their entire life, as soon as they retire, their id goes. I felt the clock was ticking. A whole lot of our early conversations have been framed round his despair, throughout which he was his profession in a way more crucial method. After we began filming, the analysis got here. This was most likely six months in.
H: Loads of docs about artists are naturally backward-looking, however that form of reminder of mortality introduces a distinct tenor.
TN: Yeah, it actually shifted the challenge. My preliminary intent — the movie I at all times needed to make rising up — was to inform the world every part my dad has performed. However I spotted that the perfect movie I might make was one which solely I might inform as his son. That’s why it’s far more of a father/son story. And in making this movie, I got here to grasp the explanations behind his work and his drive. I at all times knew about his accolades and accomplishments, however I by no means knew his work got here from such a surprisingly darkish place.
Movie nonetheless from Third Act (2025), directed by Tadashi Nakamura
H: When did you begin filming, and the way lengthy did you movie for?
TN: We began in 2017. The pandemic prolonged issues, and my daughter was truly born every week earlier than LA went into lockdown. Due to that state of affairs, and his fragile well being, we didn’t see one another in individual for about 5 months. We did a number of window visits and issues like that, nevertheless it put a giant pause on manufacturing and made me remorse not filming extra.
Then issues opened up and we have been in a position to be with one another once more — that made me respect simply being in the identical room with him. I not took as a right having the ability to ask him about issues I’d at all times needed to know. And it made him wish to inform me every part he felt I ought to know earlier than it was too late. We compelled ourselves to be extra weak. It felt prefer it is likely to be the final time I might inform my dad how a lot I like him, how a lot he’s meant to me, how critically I take his legacy. And on the identical time, he was in a position to inform me extra as a result of he had begun to really feel his mortality — issues about his life and how you can navigate the world, and the way proud he was of me, each as a filmmaker and a father.
H: So making this movie acquired you each to open up in methods you may in any other case not have?
TN: For certain. We are able to specific ourselves by our work, however after we sit throughout from one another, we’re very a lot your common father and son who don’t actually say an excessive amount of — particularly with him being of that technology of Asian-American males. We’re not the kind of father and son who say “I love you” every single day. I believe it helped that he’s a filmmaker, and he is aware of a weak topic makes for movie.
H: There are moments within the movie throughout which he slips in filmmaking solutions, like on the finish, when he explicitly says, “This would make a great last shot.” Did that occur rather a lot?
TN: Yeah, he’s an artist to the core. Two months in the past, he was within the hospital after a fall. He was underneath a number of remedy and fairly crazy, however he needed to observe a lower of the movie, and after we sat down with it, he was as sharp as ever. He went into professor mode and gave notes and suggestions and broke down scenes. As his child, I’ve turn into used to perpetually being his pupil. He’ll at all times direct or assist me in any movie, even one about him. He can’t assist himself.
Tadashi Nakamura, Robert A. Nakamura, and Prince Nakamura in Third Act (2025), directed by Tadashi Nakamura
H: The movie hyperlinks geography to reminiscence, by your loved ones’s journeys to locations like Hawaiʻi and Manzanar. Did you at all times plan to include a go to to Manzanar into the movie?
TN: Yeah. I can’t even keep in mind the primary time I went to Manzanar, as a result of it was such part of my life. It’s humorous; coming from LA, Manzanar is on the way in which to Mammoth [Lakes]. My household doesn’t ski, however a number of Japanese Individuals fish at Mammoth in the course of the spring and summer time. At any time when we’d go fishing, we’d at all times cease there. It wasn’t till 2005, 2006 that I began to develop my very own relationship with that place. I’ve typically gone there as a part of the annual pilgrimage, nevertheless it was particular to be there with simply my dad and son, with out all of the hoopla.
There’s a theme within the movie of issues coming full circle. I’m the age my dad was when he made Hito Hata, his movie about his dad. I used to be born in the midst of manufacturing; my daughter was born in the midst of the manufacturing of this movie. My son is identical age now that my dad was when he went to Manzanar.
My dad has a really ambivalent view of the camp. On one hand, it’s this horrible place that destroyed his household’s life and gave him this trauma he’s been processing this entire time. But it surely was additionally his childhood, and there’s nostalgia, reminiscences there. We went on the journey to share either side of the camp with my son. And due to that, I used to be seeing it by a toddler’s eyes, the way in which my son was taking part in with rocks and making up journey video games. I spotted that’s how my dad noticed Manzanar.
H: “Manzanar” has been restored and preserved. What different steps are being taken to protect his work?
TN: Over the past two or three years, Visible Communications did 4K restorations of Hito Hata and “Wataridori: Birds of Passage“ (1974). “Manzanar” has been restored by the Nationwide Movie Registry. One factor we’re hoping to do with this movie is about up a theatrical retrospective of my father’s work to go together with it, so folks can see it in a correct theater setting.
Third Act (2024) is at the moment screening each in individual and nearly as a part of the Sundance Movie Pageant.
