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Spencer Nakasako: Refugee

Before reality TV, the whole world was not yet a stage. "One of the amazing things about old documentaries like Salesman is that people were not really aware of the camera," says director/producer Spencer Nakasako. "Life just unfolded. We were wondering if that was possible anymore."

Nakasako remembers pondering this question in 1989, when he first encountered a Hi8 camera. The San Francisco-based filmmaker was in Hong Kong acting as co-director on Wayne Wang's Life Is Cheap . . . but Toilet Paper Is Expensive, which Nakasako also scripted. "We were interested in exploring this whole idea," he says. "If everyday people are holding this everyday camera, maybe that's a way of capturing everyday life."

Nakasako soon had the opportunity to realize this ambition. Out of the blue, he got a call from the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, which asked him to do an artist residency teaching video to Southeast Asian youth. He's been there ever since. "That residency turned into a residency," Nakasako jokes of his 12-year stay. It also sent him in a new direction. Nakasako left the world of fiction film for documentary, resuming a path he'd started at the University of California, Berkeley when he made Monterey Boat People (1982), a film about the fishing wars between new Vietnamese immigrants and long-time Sicilian residents in his California hometown.

At the youth center, Nakasako put video cameras in the teenagers' hands and was immediately floored by what he got back. Sullen, recalcitrant teens opened up. "That's when it started coming together for me," says the 47-year-old director. "The stuff the kids were talking about was totally amazing. A lot of it was incredibly personal -- about their families, their neighborhoods, growing up. Then there was their creativeness in how they shot. This wasn't just about content; it was also about style."

Nakasako took the ball and ran with it. First came a.k.a. Don Bonus (1995), a documentary he created from footage shot by an 18-year-old, at-risk Cambodian refugee who documented the day-to-day events of his senior year in high school. Nakasako won an Emmy for this. Next came Kelly Loves Tony (1998), a collaboration with two Laotian teenage refugees who kept a video diary of their relationship as they are thrown into adulthood too young and too fast.

Nakasako's latest project, Who's Your Daddy?, also involves a collaboration with youth from the center, but this time it's about an intense once-in-a-lifetime experience rather than day-to-day life. The documentary, slated for public television in 2003, chronicles a journey undertaken by a 25-year-old Cambodian refugee, Adoe "Mike" Siv, who returns to his homeland to reunite with his brother and father. He is accompanied by two 18-year-olds from his basketball team who also left families behind.

Little did any of them know what was in store. All three welfare kids grapple with the strangeness of being viewed as rich Americans. "They're the underdogs," says Nakasako, "and suddenly they're put into the position where they're seen as lucky," having escaped Cambodia for the Land of Plenty.

More dramatically, Mike discovers that his mother has been twisting the truth. It turns out his father and brother didn't even know each other. "Parents tell you stuff in a simple, convenient package, so that you can grow up thinking you have a normal life," says Nakasako. "For instance, my mom and dad never said, 'Hey, your grandmother is a picture bride.' Can you imagine them explaining that to a 10-year-old? So, at what point do you tell your child what really happened?" In Who's Your Daddy?, says the director, "This whole family got caught with their pants down."

But Nakasako is making sure Mike can deal with that slice-of-life on film. They sit together in the editing room. And since the interests of storyteller and subject don't always jibe, the two argue and talk it out. "Mike needs to learn how to communicate, too," says Nakasako sagely. "It's not all about making a movie. I've learned that much in life."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Film / Video > Film / Video | Asian Themes | California | 2000