CAAMFest 2023 Rea Tajiri Retrospectives

Register: https://caamfest.com/ | Contact: festivalmarketing@caamedia.org

For this year’s Retrospective Spotlight, CAAMFest honors the trailblazing Rea Tajiri. “CAAMFest is thrilled to shine its Retrospective Spotlight on artist and filmmaker Rea Tajiri, whose recent work, Wisdom Gone Wild, completes a career-defining exploration of history, memory, family, and trauma,” says CAAM Executive Director Stephen Gong. In addition to presenting Tajiri’s latest documentary, Wisdom Gone Wild, the festival will also revive the historic History & Memory and Strawberry Fields for a rare screening.

Wisdom Gone Wild, directed by Rea Tajiri
Sunday, May 14, 3:30 PM | Castro Theatre
Wisdom Gone Wild, reflects elder consciousness, the power of listening, and the healing empathy of being heard. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri partners with her mother, Rose Noda, to create a film about entering the world of a person living with dementia. Together, they nurture their connection through listening, art, and song. Expected guests: Filmmaker Rea Tajiri and Associate Producer Reiko Tahara.

Strawberry Fields, directed by Rea Tajiri
Saturday, May 13, 12:15 PM | Roxie Theater
Set in 1971, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, “Strawberry Fields,” tackles the minefield between cultural history and personal memory. After a visitation from the ghost of her sister, a rebellious 16- year-old Japanese-American girl hits the road with her boyfriend in search of a better life. Hooking up with activist friends along the way, Irene comes to an important realization about her past; her parents were incarcerated in an internment camp during WWII. She detours her road trip, ditches her boyfriend, and drives off into the Arizona desert in a determined search for the truth that will set her free. With music from Chicago Indie bands: SEAM, Veruca Salt, Tortoise, Squash Blossom, and others. Expected guest: Filmmaker Rea Tajiri.

History And Memory, directed by Rea Tajiri
Saturday, May 20, 12:00 PM | SFMOMA Phyllis Wattis Theater
Groundbreaking and haunting, this film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea 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.

History and Memory will be preceded by the following shorts:
Many Moons, directed by Chiasa Hughes
Let Me Take You Home, directed by Evelyn Hang Yin
Blue Garden, directed by Natalie Murao