Third Act

Generations of artists call Robert A. Nakamura the godfather of Asian American film, but Tadashi Nakamura calls him Dad. Born in the U.S. to Japanese immigrant parents and growing up in Los Angeles, the elder Nakamura thought of himself as an all-American boy until after Pearl Harbor, when Japanese Americans were rounded up and imprisoned; he spent three years in an American concentration camp and a lifetime coming to grips with how his family was treated. Recalling the impact of negative media images, he reinvented himself as a filmmaker and teacher, gave voice and vision to the burgeoning Asian American consciousness in the 1960s, and spent the rest of his career reversing—and teaching others to reverse—ethnic stereotypes. Shortly after Robert retired, the Trump era and his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease tore open the psychological wounds he thought were healed.

Third Act is structured chronologically around three phases of Tadashi’s father’s life: becoming an artist in Los Angeles after WWII, finding his path, and dealing with Parkinson’s and PTSD. Together, father and son function as the film's central characters; they use their shared medium of film to embody emotions that they had been hesitant to express directly. In some ways, Robert’s story is Tadashi’s story. Through making this film, Tadashi discovers that he also inherited his community’s historical trauma, in addition to the anxieties of old age, illness, and the final act of losing his father. Tadashi made all of his films with Robert Nakamura at his side. Third Act is likely the last.