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Filmmaker Kayo Hatta RememberedPersonal reflections on the pioneering filmmaker, whose final film, Fishbowl, begins airing nationally on PBS May 9
Like so many others, I was saddened to hear of the untimely death of Kayo Hatta. She still had so much to offer the world. I had the pleasure of knowing her through different phases of her life. When I first met her, Kayo was still "Lori," an incredibly bright Stanford student with endless curiosity about the world. She was always a talented writer with a lively sense of humor. It was a pleasure to work with her on East Wind: Politics and Culture of Asians in America, a quarterly journal in the mid and late 1980s. I had less contact with her when she went off to UCLA Film School, but I marveled at her accomplishments from her early films to Picture Bride. She brought to her material her passion for truth and social justice. My last ties with Kayo were all through NAATA where she and I, with many others, produced the 1998 Asian American Film Festival. Through the years, she continued to serve on workshop panels and film festival juries. My last memory of Kayo was just a month before she passed away. We had dinner together after a day-long session of reviewing film projects for potential NAATA funding. Over drinks and a wonderful meal in Chinatown, she talked about the difficulties of continuing to find support for interesting projects like Fishbowl, which she had completed recently. As always she caught you up in her enthusiasm for new projects. She even whipped out her little Casio camera and showed a few clips for a new "home movie" she was making on her new community of friends in San Diego. Kayo Hatta was a burning light, a warm and glowing presence. Now she's gone like an elegant wisp of smoke. And from time to time I'll light a candle just to remember all that she was.
I'll remember Kayo first and foremost as a good soul. I'm also grateful to Kayo and the others who contributed to the success of PICTURE BRIDE, a wondrous accomplishment that proved there is an audience for films about Asian Pacific Americans. I was fortunate enough to see PICTURE BRIDE soon after leaving college, and it inspired and emboldened me to tell stories about the people I know best and care about most. For this, I could not be more thankful. Kayo, we'll miss you!
I vividly recall my experience first viewing Picture Bride in 1995. I was on the verge of releasing my book, What the Scarecrow Said, a historical novel detailing the odyssey of multiple generations of a Japanese American family, from immigration in the late 1800s through reparations on the eve of the 21st century. At the time, "multicultural literature" was a flavor of the month in mainstream publishing, with increasing opportunity for new voices to emerge and represent / speak to / serve new niche reading audiences. Regrettably, the revolution had not quite spread to mainstream American film and television -- those most "mass" of mass-media. My agents, various representatives of my publisher, and myself had argued vigorously about the feasibility of adapting a story like mine to film. Reparations and the anniversary of the Second World War had inspired renewed national attention to one of our government's darker chapters, the wholesale wartime profiling, exclusion, round-up and internment of Japanese Americans. However, conventional wisdom seemed to be that there was a dearth of "star-quality" Asian talent out there, and that ethnic immigration and internment stories, however dramatic, were "not ready for primetime". Or, at least not from an "inside perspective." There were some screen efforts, such as Come See the Paradise and, later, Snow Falling on Cedars. Yet, although these well-meaning projects did provide prominent opportunities for Asian American actors to show their talents, their perspectives -- their emotional, moral, directorial, authorial and narrative cores -- were those of white males with whom Hollywood believed "general audiences" could identify. They were as much "Japanese American films" as Dances with Wolves was a "Native American film". How exciting it was, then, when Picture Bride emerged as the little sleeper-hit-that-could. A film sensitively written, produced, directed by and starring Japanese Americans, it defied conventional wisdom by capturing the hearts of diverse audiences and the Audience Award for Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival. But, as a long-time Asian Americanist and a Japanese American, I believe the film's greatest accomplishment extends well beyond merely forging an independent ethnic film with "cross-over" appeal. From the rhythms of its language to its representation of the inter-ethnic complexities of Hawai'i plantation life to its frank exploration of Japanese cultural gender roles, it was the most authentic, authoritative and emotionally true fictional Japanese American story I had ever seen on film (and outside an ethnic film festival or academic context), and perhaps have seen since. It gave us hope that a day would come when a mainstream media industry could envision a central, starring role for ethnic talent and tales that were "mainstream" and diverse as America. Some of us Asian Americans are still waiting for that day, seeing it just on the horizon. I am personally grateful for Kayo Hatta's exceptional contributions to pointing the way.
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