– The Fact of Asian Women (2004)
– Her Uprooting Plants Her (1995)
– Mahal means Love and Expensive (1993)
80 Years Later (2022)
Producer, Director and Writer
Digital film. 50 minutes.
The feature documentary 80 YEARS LATER explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II through multigenerational conversations with survivors and their descendants.
For more information, including screenings, awards, and events, please go to https://www.80yearslater.film.
- Boden International Film Festival, Winner, Best Feature Documentary
- New York International Film Awards, Winner, Best Historical Film
- DisOrient Film Festival, WeGeneration Award
- Fisheye Film Festival
- Berlin International Art Film Festival
- Asian Film Festival
- Toronto International Women Film Festival
- Las Vegas International Film & Screenwriting Festival
- Los Angeles Asian Film Awards
- St. Louis International Film Festival
- San Diego Asian Film Festival
- Silicon Valley Asian Pacific FilmFest
- La Femme International Film Festival
- Portland Film Festival
- Catalina Film Festival
- Global Peace Film Festival
- Mixed Asian Media Presents: Mixed Asian Media Fest
- Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
- NHdocs: the New Haven Documentary Film Festival
- Japan Film Festival
- Catalina Film Festival Screening
- International Documentary Festival Ierapetra
- Pasadena International Film Festival
- Toronto Documentary Feature & Short Film Festival
- Harlem International Film Festival
The Celine Archive (2020)
Producer, Director and Writer
Adulteress, traitor, heroine, or prey? In 1932, Filipina American Celine Navarro was buried alive by her community in Northern California. This film digs up herstory. The filmmaker, a scholar and grieving mother, with a long-term commitment to exploring race, gender and immigration, digs up Celine Navarro’s story within her unique perspective on feminism and Asian American history, exposing silences that haunt Filipinx American communities today, along with Celine Navarro’s family and scholars who know different details about this largely untold event in American history.
For more information, including screenings, articles and podcasts, please go to http://celinearchive.com
- World Premiere: Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival 2020
- Winner of several awards including Grand Prize at Culver City International Film Festival 2021; Gold Award in Biography, WorldFest/ Houston International Film Festival 2020.
- Bay Area Premiere: CAAM- Fest 2020
- International Premiere: LA FEMME 2020
- Other festivals include Reel Sisters of the Diaspora, Montreal, Seattle and Chicago Independent Film Festivals, Glasgow Film Festival, Hollywood Diversity Film Festival, and Switzerland International Film Festival.
Birthright (2009)
Producer, Director and Writer
Explores how mothering transforms womanhood, friendship, family and home through 50 in-depth interviews with a wide diversity of mothers in Santa Barbara.
Distribution: Progressive Films.
Awards Received:
- Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Performing, Media and Visual Arts Award 2004
- Academic Senate Committee on Research Fund; University of California Institute for the Research in Arts Grant
- Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research Grant. Community Research Partners include Postpartum Education for Parents and Child Abuse Listening and Mediation
- Honorable Mention: Finalist for the prestigious Roy W. Dean Award
Awards and Prizes:
- Winner, Best Feature Documentary: Big Mini DV Awards, New York, 2009.
The Fact of Asian Women (2004)
Co-Producer, Director, Writer and Editor
Contemporary Asian American female actors re-enact scenes from popular Hollywood films, colliding with the “ghosts” of Asian women in Hollywood through the revised endings of their major films performed on the streets of San Francisco. The actors then discuss sexuality in their roles and in terms of their own self-formation as actresses of color.
Distribution: Progressive Films.
To watch the film, click here and enter the password: shimizu.
Awards Received:
- UC Institute for Research in the Arts, Peninsula Foundation, Stanford Graduate Research Opportunities Grant and Social Science Research Council Sexuality Research Fellowship.
- Invited work for screening at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival Work-In-Progress Forum, March 11, 2001, World Premiere: Silver Lake Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA September 15, 2002.
Awards and Prizes:
- Winner, Best Documentary Short: Big Mini DV Film Festival, New York, 2002
- Winner, Best Picture: Women’s Issues, ZoieFest, 2003. Winner, Long Format-Education: DV Awards, 2003
- Winner, Best of Festival Documentary: Berkeley Film and Video Festival, 2003.
Super Flip (1997)
Producer, Director, Writer and Editor
An experimental narrative based on interviews with Filipino American low-wage workers in San Francisco regarding work and love. Considered an “underground” classic of Filipino American cinema.
Distribution: Progressive Films.
Awards Received:
- Motion Picture Association of America Directing Award
- Edie and Lew Wasserman Directing Fellowship, 1995-96
Screenings:
- World Premiere: Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley.
- Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival, Chicago Asian American Film Festival, Women in the Directors’ Chair International Film Festival in Chicago, Directors’ Guild of America, Arkipelago-NYU Film Festival, New York International Film and Video Festival, Memories of Overdevelopment in U.S., Canada and Latin America, Japanese American Cultural Center in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Los Angeles Filipino Film Festivals, Society for Cinema Studies, Kansas, SF Cinematheque, San Francisco Asian American International Festival, and Plug-In Gallery, Canada.
Her Uprooting Plants Her (1995)
Producer, Director, Writer and Editor
An experimental narrative based on interviews with Filipino immigrant families regarding home, memory and exile. World Premiere: Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago.
Distribution: New York: Third World Newsreel.
Awards Received:
- UCLA Institute of American Cultures Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 1995-96
- James Pendleton Foundation Directing Prize, 1994
- Asian American Studies Research Fellowship, 1994-95
Screenings:
- World Premiere: Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago
- Smithsonian Institution, Asian American Film Festival, Japanese American Cul- tural Center in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Los Angeles Filipino Film Festivals, Society for Cinema Studies, Kansas.
Mahal Means Love and Expensive (1993)
An experimental narrative based on interviews with young Filipina women regarding race, colonialism, sex and love. World Premiere: Women in the Director’s Chair, Chicago. Distribution: Progressive Films, Berkeley.