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SY: And was the UCLA Asian American Studies program, was it in being at that time, too?

RN: Yeah. They had...

SY: That was an offshoot?

RN: Yeah, they had just, they had just started all the Ethnic Studies centers, and the Ethno program grew from the Ethnic Studies centers and the film school with the idea of integrating the film program.

SY: So this was a period where you were only studying for a year?

RN: No, I was going to, going for my MFA, so I stayed there four years.

SY: Four years?

RN: Yeah, yeah. But we had been, we did VC while we were all students.

SY: I see.

RN: Yeah, so it wasn't like we graduated. In fact, we stayed on purpose, 'cause that was the only, we had access to equipment and everything. I think we could have all graduated earlier, but we stayed on so we could use the facilities.

SY: And by forming VC, was it sort of an incorporation process? What was the exact step by step to the formation?

RN: No, in fact, it was kind of the direct opposite. The idea when we were in film school, and we only came to film school because we realized the importance of media in terms of changing perceptions of Asians, people of color, political statements we could make. So everyone knew that media was important, and logically that we could, the best people to do it is ourselves so that we have, we can present an insider's view instead of a view from outside. So we all came in with that idea. None of us came in with the idea of making a three-picture deal and going to Hollywood, at least within the Asian component, and I'm pretty sure no one had that quite in mind.

SY: But did you sign a partnership agreement or anything...

RN: No, no. I mean, this was the whole Ethno program, and so I'm just giving you a context of when we went in there, no one went in there with the idea of making a career out of it. It was all the idea of social change, building community, all of that. And essentially it was anti-Hollywood if nothing else. So that was part of Ethno, and then we thought we would continue it, form our own organization called, we called it Visual Communications because the initials were VC. So that was, that's why we chose that name.

SY: Who came up with that, do you remember?

RN: I think I did.

SY: VC meaning...

RN: Viet Cong.

SY: Viet Cong. It really was, because it was during the Vietnamese War.

RN: Yeah, right. So that was our...

SY: That's the origin.

RN: So we started, early on, a lot of us realized the need to develop our own media. 'Cause we knew we needed to be able to see ourselves through our own eyes. I think that's one of the reasons. But a lot of other people felt that we needed to control that by changing, that through media we could change our stereotypes to a broad white audience, which I didn't agree with. A lot of us didn't agree with that, 'cause that's just too monumental. It'll never do anything. I know generally VC, we had the idea of developing media for our communities. I think a lot of, when I was interviewed about VC, a lot of people -- or Ethno -- that we all came in to change Hollywood, but we've got to become Asian Francis Ford Coppolas and we're going to change. But we didn't really come in with that idea, we came in with the idea that we needed to change our own stereotypes. Because I think we -- I know I have, growing up in the '40s and '50s, I had assimilated a lot of the negative stereotypes. And so we felt we needed to just make films about that so we could see ourselves as kind of everyday human beings. The other is that we had no roots. This is before any Asian American studies programs, very few books were written, we had a paragraph or two in the history books. So we felt film was a good way to recapture, or we like to say to define and redefine who we are. So those were some of the ideas. And I tell my students when they ask me for VC and also the Ethno program that I'm running now, is the idea of documenting and preserving and presenting who we are and our community. So I think that was...

SY: And you all sort of came to this mutually acceptable... I mean, was it a group, would you meet during the day or at night?

RN: Oh, no, it became... in fact, since I had the most experience and I was the oldest, I kind of, we kind of designed it from the Eames experience. And collectivity was big during the movement. And so we call ourselves a community-based production company. But the idea, we worked as a collective. That's why in the early films, you don't see -- unless we put it in later -- you don't see any staff mentioned in the credits. 'Cause we didn't want to say, so and so directed this, and so and so was the producer and all of that. So we tried -- and so when we had a film, there had to be someone in charge of coordinating it, but we'd all get together and talk about the idea and look at the dailies as a group and whatnot. And so we tried to put the film together, do our films that way.

SY: And can you go over the people who were involved again?

RN: Yeah. The principal people would be Eddie Wong, Duane Kubo, Alan Ohashi, Alan Kondo, myself, Pat Law Miller, Candice Murata, and...

SY: Steve?

RN: Oh, yeah, Steve. See, I know I'm gonna...

SY: Forget people... that's okay.

RN: Yeah, yeah, Steve Tatsukawa.

SY: So it was not a small group, it was a fairly...

RN: Well, yeah. At our peak, this was in the late '70s, there was a huge staff. We used to...

SY: But the formation of...

RN: Of it would be, anyway, the defined founding members are Alan Ohashi, Eddie Wong, Duane Kubo and myself. But in my definition of it, Alan Kondo, he wasn't technically a founder, but he came in before, only kind of real professional editing skills. So it became a very, very important part of...

SY: So, but there would be, say, defining principles that formed your organization, were devised by this smaller group?

RN: Yeah, but we kind of drew from everyone the whole movement. Like Gidra was working kind of on the same idea, that we're community based, that we need to find our own roots, define who we are, and then, of course, use media for social change, what's happening now. So in a sense we wanted to be the media arm of the movement, at least Southern California. And it's not known that well, but before we did our films, we did a lot of print education materials. We did posters, silkscreen posters, we did these, I think really, they still hold up today, these educational kits. We did an ethnic understanding series, and there were these little profiles of community people, in the Filipino community, Korean community. Then we did East-West activity kits that have all these games for young kids.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.