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SY: And then you also made a film, but that came later?

RN: Yeah. Well, so that was, that took place, and then the beginning of the EthnoCommunications program that the Ethnic Studies Centers put together. So a lot of us were recruited, went to film school. And our first project is to do a Super 8 film, so it's Super 8, very teeny film, and no synch sound to it. We had to make an eight-minute film, that was the exercise. But once again, we were together as a group, so we had an Asian American group unit together. So anyway, I made Manzanar for that assignment. So I went back to Manzanar and shot all the places I used to play and things that I remember, and put that together with the minimal voice over, but a lot of music. But the whole point of the film was that kind of play on being beautiful and pleasant, but using the voice over saying that it wasn't. So that was supposed to be the first film on camp, made by... well, it was one of the first films, period, that was made on camp.

SY: And was that your first film as well?

RN: Yeah, that was my first.

SY: So you had never shot with...

RN: I've shot stuff for Charles, but I've never, I've never put together a film or edited.

SY: So you were largely self-taught, then, when did it?

RN: Well, yeah. We were all... so there was a lot of good films that came out of there. Eddie Wong did his film Wong Sing Song about his father who runs a laundry in Hollywood. And Manzanar... I'm forgetting. About four or five films that were still kind of used now as artifacts if nothing else, not art.

SY: But in terms of training...

RN: Well, we were being trained then.

SY: In the EthnoCommunications school? And so you remember who you were being taught by?

RN: Yeah, there was, the person, Professor John Young had put the program together with the study center. And there was a forerunner to Ethno was called something else. So there was an African American professor, Lucille Taylor, who ran a pilot, they called it the Pilot Project, and it was a small group of black, Chicano, and Asian Americans. And then the big program when we all came in. And so Professor Young was kind of in charge of all that. Our main instructor coordinator was a graduate student called, his name was Dave Garcia, and he went on later to be a producer somewhere. And then we took the regular tech courses taught by different instructors. But our filmmaking and film background, all of that, was pretty much done through EthnoCommunications.

SY: So it was just filmmaking or was it other arts that were being taught?

RN: No, just strictly film.

SY: Completely filmmaking.

RN: Yeah, we were part of the, I was part of the MFA film program and then the undergraduates who were getting their BA.

SY: And as far as you know, were there other programs similar to it?

RN: I don't think so. I think it was very innovative. That was the first time that the school was literally invaded by all these students of color. So UCLA was pretty, there's a whole exhibit and series of retrospectives, panels called the L.A. Rebellion: Black Cinema in L.A. or something like that. So that's funded by the same Pacific Standard Times, so there's a lot of people who are part of the Ethno, the African American component of EthnoCommunications that are in that.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.