Tadashi Nakamura made his cinematic debut as a new child, in his father Robert’s 1980 movie Hito Hata: Increase the Banner — the primary movie created by and about Asian People. 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 along with his household throughout World Battle II. The filmmaker would go on to revisit internment and its legacy a number of instances in his work, together with his 1972 brief “Manzanar,” which depicts his recollection of his time there, and 1995’s One thing Sturdy Inside, which includes dwelling films shot throughout the camp.
Nakamura is named 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 12 months’s Sundance Movie Competition, his son takes on the mantle of director whereas the elder Nakamura displays on his life, work, and up to date Parkinson’s prognosis. Forward of the pageant, 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 approach. This interview has been edited and condensed for time and readability.
Robert A. Nakamura in Third Act (2025), directed by Tadashi Nakamura (picture by Robert A. Nakamura)
Hyperallergic: Is your loved ones secure from the fires in Los Angeles?
Tadashi Nakamura: We’re secure. We’re in Culver Metropolis, on the west facet. My home is about 5 minutes away from my dad and mom’, so I’m capable of see them typically.
H: The fires have additionally been destroying or endangering cultural establishments, together with archives. Is your dad’s work secure?
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 nice finish, due to Third Act, we had somebody scanning his negatives full-time for 2 years, so we have now a superb 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 significantly fascinated about it. Now the fires have pressured us to make plans and take into consideration the probabilities.
H: Within the movie, you comment that it felt inevitable that you’d ultimately make a film about your father. What particularly made you go forward with this mission now?
TN: It was as a consequence of what we now know to be the early signs of Parkinson’s. He retired round his early 70s, and I observed him slowing down in his mid-70s. He’d at all times suffered from despair, nevertheless it had gotten actually unhealthy. 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. Quite a lot of our early conversations have been framed round his despair, throughout which he was his profession in a way more crucial approach. After we began filming, the prognosis got here. This was in all probability six months in.
H: Loads of docs about artists are naturally backward-looking, however that form of reminder of mortality introduces a unique tenor.
TN: Yeah, it actually shifted the mission. My preliminary intent — the movie I at all times needed to make rising up — was to inform the world the whole lot my dad has carried out. However I noticed that the very best movie I might make was one which solely I might inform as his son. That’s why it’s rather more of a father/son story. And in making this movie, I got here to know 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 really born every week earlier than LA went into lockdown. Due to that scenario, and his fragile well being, we didn’t see one another in particular person for about 5 months. We did numerous window visits and issues like that, nevertheless it put an enormous pause on manufacturing and made me remorse not filming extra.
Then issues opened up and we have been capable of be with one another once more — that made me admire simply being in the identical room with him. I now not took as a right with the ability to ask him about issues I’d at all times needed to know. And it made him need to inform me the whole lot he felt I ought to know earlier than it was too late. We pressured 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 really like him, how a lot he’s meant to me, how significantly I take his legacy. And on the identical time, he was capable of inform me extra as a result of he had begun to really feel his mortality — issues about his life and easy methods to 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 categorical ourselves via our work, however once 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 era of Asian-American males. We’re not the kind of father and son who say “I love you” day by day. I believe it helped that he’s a filmmaker, and he is aware of a weak topic makes for a superb movie.
H: There are moments within the movie throughout which he slips in filmmaking ideas, 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 numerous medicine and fairly crazy, however he needed to observe a minimize of the movie, and once 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 out to be used to endlessly being his scholar. 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, via 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 bear 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 numerous Japanese People fish at Mammoth through the spring and summer season. 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 course of manufacturing; my daughter was born in the course of the manufacturing of this movie. My son is similar 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. However it was additionally his childhood, and there’s nostalgia, recollections there. We went on the journey to share each side of the camp with my son. And due to that, I used to be seeing it via a baby’s eyes, the way in which my son was taking part in with rocks and making up journey video games. I noticed 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: During the last two or three years, Visible Communications did 4K restorations of Hito Hata and “Wataridori: Birds of Passage“ (1974). “Manzanar” has been restored via the Nationwide Movie Registry. One factor we’re hoping to do with this movie is ready up a theatrical retrospective of my father’s work to go along with it, so individuals can see it in a correct theater setting.
Third Act (2024) is presently screening each in particular person and nearly as a part of the Sundance Movie Competition.
