We continue our interviews at the 2016 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) organized by Visual Communications with a chat with Janice D. Tanaka, documentary filmaker and the director for Rebel With a Cause: The Life of Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga. Janice talks about discovering the amazing and badass life of Aiko, who was her mother’s best friend, and the drive to document her role in the redress movement for the unlawful internment of Japanese Americans in WW2.
ABOUT THE FILM:
VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS ALUMNUS JANICE D. TANAKA has been active in the film and media industry for over 30 years. Aside from working as a producer and educator, Tanaka has also served as the Manager for Diversity Development at Fox, where she worked on initiatives to employ professionals of color. Her works WHEN YOU’RE SMILING: THE DEADLY LEGACY OF INTERNMENT (1999) and RIGHT OF PASSAGE (2014) have anchored key moments in Japanese American history. Tanaka’s latest documentary feature, REBEL WITH A CAUSE: THE LIFE OF AIKO HERZIG YOSHINAGA, is an endearing and essential portrait of a woman whose discovery of premeditated governmental misconduct during the WWII was crucial — not only to the landmark 1987 coram nobis cases of Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Koramatsu and Minoru Yasui, but also the National Council for Japanese Americans Redress (NCJAR) lawsuit of 1983.
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