FREE

The latest installment of Echo Park Film Center’s Race and Space in Los Angeles screening series focuses on the city’s Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community. The evening will begin with a USC student-made production, The Challenge (1957, Claude Bache), which examines the unlawful incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II from an assimilationist perspective put forth by the Japanese Americans Citizens League, which at the time was promoting a platform leaning towards adopting American ideologies.

As a counterpoint, the program will feature films from APIA filmmaking collective Visual Communications, whose works emphasized the APIA artist’s point of view. Manzanar (1971), a seminal film by VC founder Robert Nakamura, addresses the WWII Japanese American incarceration from a very different perspective. The program will include additional VC films that explore the topic of identity and collective memory within the APIA community.

This program is presented in partnership with Echo Park Film Center, the Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive at USC, and Visual Communications.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a nonprofit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org.