Presented by the Film and Digital Media Department.
Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Communications Building, Room 150 (Studio C)
DESCRIPTION: Generations of artists call Robert A. Nakamura “The Godfather of Asian American film,” but his son, Tad, calls him Dad. As the filmmaking son of a filmmaking legend, Tad uses the lessons his dad taught him to decipher the legacy of an aging man who was a child survivor of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, a successful photographer who gave it up to tell his own story, an activist at the dawn of a social movement—and a father whose struggles have won his son freedoms that eluded Japanese Americans of his generation. As Parkinson’s Disease clouds his memory, Tad sets out to retrieve his story—and in the process discovers his own. The two have made films together, with Robert always by Tad’s side. THIRD ACT is most likely the last.
BIO: TADASHI NAKAMURA is an Emmy-award winning filmmaker and the Director of the Watase Media Arts Center, a production company of the Japanese American National Museum. Tadashi was named CNN’s “Young People Who Rock” for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Now with over 20 years of filmmaking experience, his films include NOBUKO MIYAMOTO: A SONG IN MOVEMENT (2024), MELE MURALS (2016), Gotham Independent Film Award-winning JAKE SHIMABUKURO: LIFE ON FOUR STRINGS (2013), A SONG FOR OURSELVES 009), and PILGRIMAGE (2006). He is currently working on THIRD ACT, about his pioneering filmmaker father, Robert A. Nakamura, and his current battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Tadashi has an M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz anB.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA. He made the DOC NYC ‘40 Under 40’ list in 2019 and was a 2020-2022 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellows and a 2022-2023 Sundance Asian American Fellow. He is currently a mentor for the 2024 CAAM Fellowship and recipient of the 2024 Rockwood Documentary Leaders Fellowship.