My America ... Or Honk if You Love Buddha

The filmmaker takes to the road to see what it means to be Asian American in our rapidly-changing society.

Premiere Date
May 1, 1998
Length
90 minutes
Funding Initiative
Series and Special Projects
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    1997 Sundance Film Festival-Excellence in Cinematography (Documentary)
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    1998 Visual Communications' CHILIVISIONS XII-Steve Tatsukawa Memorial Award
    • filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña
    Producer

    Renee Tajima-Peña

    Tajima-Peña is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose directing credits include the nationally televised documentaries, Calavera Highway (PBS), "The Mexico Story" of The New Americans series (PBS), My Journey Home (PBS), Labor Women (PBS), My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha (PBS), The Last Beat Movie (Sundance Channel), The Best Hotel on Skid Row… Show more (HBO), and Who Killed Vincent Chin? (PBS). Her films have premiered at festivals around the world including Cannes, San Francisco, Sundance, Toronto, and the Whitney Biennial. Among her honors are a Peabody Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, the Alpert Award in the Arts for Film/Video, International Documentary Association Achievement Award, and two Rockefeller Foundation fellowships in documentary film. Tajima-Peña is a USA Broad Fellow in media arts, and a professor and graduate director of the social documentation program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.     Show less

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    The Film

    A rollicking ride across the changing terrain of American culture, Renee Tajima-Peña's documentary odyssey recaptures the spirit of Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, Asian American style. Tajima-Peña recalls her childhood, back in the days when her vacationing family crossed five state lines without ever seeing another Asian face, and hits the road again to explore just how much the racial and cultural landscape of America has changed. Driving coast-to-coast, she seeks out what it means to be Asian American in our rapidly-changing society and comes across an ecclectic group of offbeat and distinctive people.

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