Tadashi Nakamura made his cinematic debut as a newborn, in his father Robert’s 1980 film Hito Hata: Raise the Banner — the first film created by and about Asian Americans. Co-directed with Duane Kubo, it chronicles the tumultuous life of a Japanese-American man played by the mononymous actor Mako, and was partially informed by the elder Nakamura’s personal experience of being imprisoned at the Manzanar concentration camp along with his family during World War II. The filmmaker would go on to revisit internment and its legacy several times in his work, including his 1972 short “Manzanar,” which depicts his recollection of his time there, and 1995’s Something Strong Within, which comprises home movies shot within the camp.
Nakamura is known as the “Godfather of Asian-American Media” because of his groundbreaking film work, his influence as a longtime professor at the University of California Los Angeles, and his co-founding of Visual Communications, a nonprofit that develops Asian-American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and media artists. But in the new documentary Third Act (2025), premiering as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, his son takes on the mantle of director while the elder Nakamura reflects on his life, work, and recent Parkinson’s diagnosis. Ahead of the festival, we met with Tadashi over Zoom to discuss the film’s long shoot, how it brought him and his father closer together, and how it spurred him to see Manzanar in a new way. This interview has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.
Hyperallergic: Is your family safe from the fires in Los Angeles?
Tadashi Nakamura: We’re safe. We’re in Culver City, on the west side. My house is about five minutes away from my parents’, so I’m able to see them often.
H: The fires have also been destroying or endangering cultural institutions, including archives. Is your dad’s work safe?
TN: Some of his films are at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, a couple are in the Academy Archive, but all his photos and negatives are at his house, and not in a fireproofed location. So yeah — that was one of the things that crossed my mind. On the good end, because of Third Act, we had someone scanning his negatives full-time for two years, so we have a good amount of it digitally archived, but still didn’t finish. When we restored “Manzanar,” we used a workprint because the original negative was lost in a flood at Visual Communications a long time ago — so things have already been lost. It unfortunately takes something this horrible to get you seriously thinking about it. Now the fires have forced us to make plans and think about the possibilities.
H: In the film, you remark that it felt inevitable that you would eventually make a movie about your father. What specifically made you go ahead with this project now?
TN: It was due to what we now know to be the early symptoms of Parkinson’s. He retired around his early 70s, and I noticed him slowing down in his mid-70s. He’d always suffered from depression, but it had gotten really bad. We chalked it up to his post-retirement life — someone who’s been making films their whole life, once they retire, their identity goes. I felt the clock was ticking. A lot of our early conversations were framed around his depression, during which he was looking at his career in a much more critical way. After we started filming, the diagnosis came. This was probably six months in.
H: Plenty of docs about artists are naturally backward-looking, but that kind of reminder of mortality introduces a different tenor.
TN: Yeah, it really shifted the project. My initial intent — the film I always wanted to make growing up — was to tell the world everything my dad has done. But I realized that the best film I could make was one that only I could tell as his son. That’s why it’s much more of a father/son story. And in making this film, I came to understand the reasons behind his work and his drive. I always knew about his accolades and accomplishments, but I never knew his work came from such a surprisingly dark place.
H: When did you start filming, and how long did you film for?
TN: We started in 2017. The pandemic extended things, and my daughter was actually born a week before LA went into lockdown. Because of that situation, and his fragile health, we didn’t see each other in person for about five months. We did a lot of window visits and things like that, but it put a big pause on production and made me regret not filming more.
Then things opened up and we were able to be with each other again — that made me appreciate just being in the same room with him. I no longer took for granted being able to ask him about things I’d always wanted to know. And it made him want to tell me everything he felt I should know before it was too late. We forced ourselves to be more vulnerable. It felt like it might be the last time I could tell my dad how much I love him, how much he’s meant to me, how seriously I take his legacy. And at the same time, he was able to tell me more because he had begun to feel his mortality — things about his life and how to navigate the world, and how proud he was of me, both as a filmmaker and a father.
H: So making this film got you both to open up in ways you might otherwise not have?
TN: For sure. We can express ourselves through our work, but when we sit across from each other, we’re very much your average father and son who don’t really say too much — especially with him being of that generation of Asian-American men. We’re not the type of father and son who say “I love you” every day. I think it helped that he’s a filmmaker, and he knows a vulnerable subject makes for a good film.
H: There are moments in the film during which he slips in filmmaking suggestions, like at the end, when he explicitly says, “This would make a great last shot.” Did that happen a lot?
TN: Yeah, he’s an artist to the core. Two months ago, he was in the hospital after a fall. He was under a lot of medication and pretty loopy, but he wanted to watch a cut of the film, and when we sat down with it, he was as sharp as ever. He went into professor mode and gave notes and feedback and broke down scenes. As his kid, I’ve become used to forever being his student. He’ll always direct or help me in any film, even one about him. He can’t help himself.
H: The film links geography to memory, through your family’s trips to places like Hawaiʻi and Manzanar. Did you always plan to incorporate a visit to Manzanar into the film?
TN: Yeah. I can’t even remember the first time I went to Manzanar, because it was such a part of my life. It’s funny; coming from LA, Manzanar is on the way to Mammoth [Lakes]. My family doesn’t ski, but a lot of Japanese Americans fish at Mammoth during the spring and summer. Whenever we’d go fishing, we’d always stop there. It wasn’t until 2005, 2006 that I started to develop my own relationship with that place. I’ve often gone there as part of the annual pilgrimage, but it was special to be there with just my dad and son, without all the hoopla.
There’s a theme in the film of things coming full circle. I’m the age my dad was when he made Hito Hata, his film about his dad. I was born in the middle of production; my daughter was born in the middle of the production of this film. My son is the same age now that my dad was when he went to Manzanar.
My dad has a very ambivalent view of the camp. On one hand, it’s this terrible place that destroyed his family’s life and gave him this trauma he’s been processing this whole time. But it was also his childhood, and there’s nostalgia, memories there. We went on the trip to share both sides of the camp with my son. And because of that, I was seeing it through a child’s eyes, the way my son was playing with rocks and making up adventure games. I realized that’s how my dad saw Manzanar.
H: “Manzanar” has been restored and preserved. What other steps are being taken to preserve his work?
TN: Over the last two or three years, Visual Communications did 4K restorations of Hito Hata and “Wataridori: Birds of Passage“ (1974). “Manzanar” has been restored through the National Film Registry. One thing we’re hoping to do with this film is set up a theatrical retrospective of my father’s work to go with it, so people can see it in a proper theater setting.
Third Act (2024) is currently screening both in person and virtually as part of the Sundance Film Festival.
