Emiko Omori

A 7-part series telling dramatic and diverse stories of struggle and survival during the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From the producers of Eyes on the Prize, this series was met with critical acclaim and won both an Emmy Award for writing and a duPont-Columbia Award.

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

Host Scott Forrest presents a curated compilation of eight independent short films in this rapid-fire science-fiction feature. Genres collide, narratives twist, aesthetics clash, and even humor, both campy and dystopian, showcase the vast creative possibilities of each story's individual world, offering the viewer a brief glimpse into the lives of every character's attempt to survive the otherworldly chaos around them. Released in 2001, the selected shorts span original creation dates of 1997 to 2001; most of the featured filmmakers also appear as themselves in short video interviews to talk about their inspirations, creative process and motivations while working on their individual shorts.

A group of elderly residents of an old San Francisco hotel are threatened with eviction when a developer wants to demolish the structure. Initially, they feel resigned to their fate, but a young desk clerk gets involved and helps spearhead a resistance.

A highly-critical documentary about the history of Asian-American actresses in Hollywood. Features interviews with pioneering Asian-American actresses and clips from classic films, such as "The Thief of Bagdad," "The Good Earth" and "The World of Suzie Wong," interspersed with Asian/feminist sociological commentary.

This is the story of one simple invention, the vibrator, and its relationship to one complex human behavior, the female orgasm.

A rampant, street level story of mentorship and everyday heroism in tough circumstances. An inner city coach's son, estranged in his youth from his father, spends five years on ball fields in inner city Oakland and Havana, following the lives of two extraordinary youth baseball coaches, Roscoe in Oakland and Nicolas in Havana. The coaches meet on videotape and two years of red tape later, Coach Roscoe and nine Oakland players travel to Havana to play Coach Nicolas' team. For one week, the players and coaches eat, dance, swim, argue and play baseball together. But when the parent of an Oakland player is murdered back home, it brings back the inescapable reality and challenges of life in an American inner city.

The Surrealist, "Exquisite Corpse" was a French Café parlor game. "Exquisite Moving Corpse" is more of an artist chain letter. 60 artists participated over a two-year period, beginning in March 2020. Each invited artist made a one minute video in response to the last frame of the previous minute.

African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.

In this film made over ten years, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. She and translator (and fellow war widow) Xuan Ngoc Nguyen explore the meaning of war and loss on a human level. The film weaves interviews with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the legacy of war.

Reveals the courageous lives of pioneer camerawomen from Hollywood to Bollywood, from war zones to children’s laughter, in a way that has never been seen before. Based on a book by Alexis Krasilovsky, the film tells the stories of camerawomen surviving the odds in Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Mexico, the U.S. and other countries, as well as exploring their individual visions.

The story of the hopes, rebellions, and repression of the 1960s, told by those who lived it - members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

A compelling study of the Hopi that captures their deep spirituality and reveals their integration of art and daily life. Amidst beautiful images of Hopi land and life, a variety of Hopi — a farmer, a religious elder, a grandmother, a painter, a potter, and a weaver — speak about the preservation of the Hopi way. Their philosophy of living in balance and harmony with nature is a model to the Western world of an environmental ethic in action.

CORPUS explores the mass adulation and explosive posthumous recognition of Selena Quintanilla, the Tejano rock singer murdered by the president of her fan club in 1995. Pushing beyond the mainstream media's fascination with her violent death, Portillo interviews Selena's family and friends as well as the devoted fans that pilgrimage to Selena's grave in Corpus Christi, Texas, to pay homage to the slain star. Moving and provocative, this humble investigative portrait explores Selena's cultural significance as a pop icon and shines a light on the hopes, fantasies, fears, and realities of young Latinas today.

Like many Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, the young Omori sisters did their best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political consequences of internment. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply troubling chapter in American history.

Though it wasn’t initially intended to be silly, this cheeky short captures absurdity and playfulness on a street corner in San Francisco’s Chinatown, encouraging us to laugh a little more.

Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol is both a historical portrait of Fumiko, her family and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community in the decades before World War II as well as a contemporary story which follows 97-year old Fumi and her daughter Natalie as they return to the site of the former Minidoka internment camp, their first trip back together in 63 years. The film reveals how the iconic photograph became the impetus for Fumiko to publicly lobby against the injustices of the past.

Five Chicana cultural critics gather over a meal to discuss and debate the life, death, and legacy of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.

The May’s Photo Studio brings families together: in the past by splicing together family portraits in spite of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and in the present by reconnecting May’s granddaughter with her family’s legacy. These stunning photographs show San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early to mid-20th century, a vanishing “old Chinatown” vibrant with culture; an immigrant community becoming Americanized.

Ed Hardy is emblazoned on clothing worn by Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Mick Jagger, on wine and dozens of other products. Now you'll meet the real Ed Hardy, the godfather of modern tattooing and artist extraordinaire who gave up a promising career in the fine arts to pursue his childhood obsession: tattoos.