120,000 lumens
(13 minute short film)Official Selection:
2024 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival,CA
2024 Local Sightings Film Festival, Seattle, WA
At risk of erasure, Los Angeles' Little Tokyo community fought to build a permanent home for its Japanese American arts and culture. The Center opened its doors in 1980. Four decades later, in the quiet of the pandemic, 120,000 lumens observes the time and memory embodied by a building.
Trailer
Stills
Director’s Statement
My first short experimental film 120,000 lumens observes the time and memory of a Japanese American building without people or voices to share its history: an empty theatre, a 150-year old grapefruit tree, storage spaces, offices, recent and stark renovations, a garden, and a plaza. I search for traces of time passing and the people who shaped the space: dust, wear, piles of paper and books, scratches on the concrete floors, and the mark of many hands. Construction lights reveal a different scale of time at work: botanical and geological, decay and growth. The space, with enough light and time, begins to speak for the unseen Japanese Americans who built it, who organized and sang and danced within its walls, and who continue to shape our future. The film closes with the echoes of a performance.
Credits
Director:
Scott Oshima
Director of Photography & Editor:
Ken Honjo
Score:
Sara Sithi-Amnuai
Production:
Margaux “Mago” Morales
Kuniharu Yoshida
お陰様 でした
Thank you for your shadow:
Andrew James Phoenix Jewell
Hirokazu Kosaka
Kenji C. Liu
Pedro Gutierrez
Aric Nakamoto
George Royal
Maria Magdalena Rodriguez
Francisco “Paco” Soc Sut
Clement Hanami
Autumn Le' Brannon
Frances Cullado
Cole Montgomery
My family & friends
Filmed at:
Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (est. 1980)
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Kotohajime (1992) video courtesy of Hirokazu Kosaka
Funded in part by Art Matters
S. Oshima © 2019