>> Okay, so it's been about a 15-year struggle
to make the film, and we are very honored --
we were very honored that both
Angela and Yuri agreed to do it.
It was originally envisioned as --
in the truest sense of collaboration,
it was envisioned as a series,
as a documentary series.
Oh, can we can get the house --
[inaudible] the house lights up?
Thank you.
[Inaudible]
It was envisioned as a series of conversations
between women of color cultural workers.
So, it was really about opening
up a dialogue on the kind of work
that is often disappeared or forgotten.
And all the women that we wanted to
have conversations with, including Yuri,
were people that really don't
-- how shall I say this?
They're not out on the front lines, saying, "Hi.
Put me in the spotlight."
Okay? They're really just doing
the hard work, behind the scenes,
and are not particularly
interested in getting credit for it.
They're just interested in moving
communities and building people --
or building communities and
moving people forward.
So, that's how we originally envisioned it.
And H.Q. and I were very honored that we
had a great group of people working with us.
We shot this documentary
for absolutely no money.
I won't say how little, because
you wouldn't believe me anyway.
I mean, a documentary like this would
normally cost at least a million dollars.
We had -- [scoffs].
>> Fifteen.
[Laughters]
>> We put it on credit cards.
>> So, you know we don't have
enough credit for a million, right?
>> We're professors.
We started off as graduate students.
We're professors.
We don't make that kind of money.
I think -- I'll be honest.
We actually -- the amount of money we actually
received from like pathway development grants
and things like that was about $10,000.
>> Wow.
>> Okay, the rest of it was
just on credit cards.
And what we did not know, we taught ourselves.
And what we didn't know, we talked
to other people, and we said, "Hey.
Could you help us?
Because we don't know how to edit.
So, could you teach us editing?"
Because we could not afford to pay an
editor, you know, $2,500 a week, to cut this.
We had to learn it ourselves.
So, it was collaborative in
the best sense of the word,
where people who could donated
their time, their expertise
and they shared their information with us.
And we just sort of struggled through it,
because we thought it was an important story.
We hoped that that came out.
I hope that it seems like
an important story to you.
Because it seemed like a
very important story to us.
So, those are some basic things I wanted to
sort of, say so that, if somebody's like, "Oh,
all the names that go by
in the credits," I mean,
that's just a portion of the people who helped.
Because there are so many unnamed people
that really donated their time and just sort
of encouraged us when we were like,
"We can't finish this.
We don't what to do.
We can't possibly do this."
So, a long haul and a tremendous
amount of support
from the community to get this thing done.
>> Thank you very much, again,
for being here, now.
I also want to thank John Tohante [phonetic] and
Lynn [inaudible] for bringing us here again --
all of the folks who sponsored the
event tonight and making this possible.
Well, Angela is here, so I do...
want to acknowledge her presence here.
I think one of the thing that really
struck me was that we really wanted to
sort of open up to the idea that
there's a lot of women of color --
and women, in general, but particularly
women of color doing some tremendous work
of community building and producing the kind
of knowledge that come out of that work.
And as a graduate student, at the time, for
me, in political science and I was a student
of political theory, so I was
planning to be a political theorist.
And really, I felt that the knowledge that was
being taught to me was so impoverished and yet,
at the same time, I was so privileged to
encounter all kind of people in my life,
a lot of women of color, who were so -- they
had wealth of knowledges, all kind of knowledge,
not just a single mode of
thinking or a particular type.
And so, we really wanted to, somehow, just catch
a little bit of that and share some of that,
with people who were as privileged
as I was, maybe in graduate school.
And so, that's part of the idea.
And of course, Angela was so
generous and so gracious and she --
you know, one of the thing that we
talk about is how important it is
that filmmaker use a collaborative process
and we can't really do it by ourselves.
And even though a lot of film study is really
about the director and, you
know, maybe the star.
But in reality, hundreds of people make a film.
It's not one person.
And so, in this project, from the very
beginning, Angela had given us her insight
and feedback, and actually, she
agreed, which, you know, to this day,
I don't know -- all of this
will -- but she agreed to do it.
And she did not just agree to one conversation,
but she was generous and gracious enough
to agree to a whole series, if we had had all
the resources that we dreamt about having.
But of course, we didn't, and through the
years, she stuck by us and she supported us.
And I think, Yuri and Angela -- all
I can say is, if you're a filmmaker
or you are a storyteller, and if you're
fortunate enough to have your subject
as those two women, you really
don't have to do a lot.
>> No.
>> I mean, you don't.
Because, as you could tell, they -- it's
not that I'm not taking responsibility
for the work that we did [inaudible].
But that we need to understand that, in our
community and in our lives and in the people
that we encounter, they had so much.
Usually we don't have to exaggerate.
Usually, we don't have to work very hard,
to be the beneficiary of that wealth.
And so, I just want to say that, because of
their generosity that they shared their lives
and they worked with us -- because
really it's about their work --
we were able to make this happen.
So.
>> I just wanted to get your thoughts about
the challenge, or maybe the joy of teaching
about Yuri Kochiyama, because I hear a lot of
reaction with people [inaudible] her and see,
I think, strong Asian-American
in these movements,
the initial reaction may be just the fallout
from all the minority stereotyping,
is that, "Wow."
You know, really, the people who are
raised in these communities understand
that having very powerful, vocal
Asian women is not anything unusual.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe
the reaction that you get from, you know,
dumb Asian-Americans who
have internalized this idea,
that to be Asian means to
be submissive and passive?
And then maybe non-Asian communities, where,
again, there might be this [inaudible],
that this is cultural to not be political,
or this is cultural for Asian-Americans
to always be behind the scenes,
when clearly [inaudible] at all.
>> Well, the thing about Yuri is that
she's incredibly modest, as is Angela.
So, it's really hard, sometimes, to get her to
talk about really important stuff that they did.
"Oh, yeah, I was there."
You're like, "[inaudible] they
were organizing [inaudible]."
Really, like, you know, like there's
this shot of this split-screen
where there's this huge park protest in Central
Park, and there's Yuri behind the microphone.
So, [inaudible] or something.
So, she's not just sort of
hanging out in the crowd, okay?
But -- and she described herself
in the group here at one point.
And the thing is, is that, well,
just take Yuri's case, for example.
She, I think, gives us a
different model of leadership.
So, there are times when she's very,
very quiet and behind the scenes.
And other times, people think, "Oh,
what a sweet, little old lady."
And, then, other times, like, "Oh,
you do not mess with Yuri Kochiyama."
So, I think she gives -- I
mean, she's lived a long time.
She's seen so many different things and
she brings so many communities together.
So, I think she gives a really
good model about how --
she's sort of a fantastic model for how to be
in a world as a generous, kind human being,
that cares about people that
is also incredibly political.
And I think, for most people,
they recognize different women,
different people in their community that
have been that way, but as far as sort
of the stereotype of the sort of -- I don't
know where that stereotype comes from honestly.
Because all Asian women that I met do not --
>> Kick butt.
>> They have not been anything
like the sort of --
this is what, you know, Hollywood cinema
tells you what they're supposed to be.
I mean, I think there's a real effort
to sort of create this other reality.
It has nothing to do with any of the --
and I've lived for a couple of years.
I'm 47 years old.
I've never met any of the type of women they
tell us that we're supposed to see on film.
Not a single one.
>> [Inaudible].
>> I think that the reactions -- you
wanted to know about the reactions.
The reactions we've gotten mostly
are typical of the reactions
that we got earlier, which is "Wow.
How come I have not met -- encountered Yuri?
You know, I live in this community" or
"I know the history of this movement.
Why haven't I encountered her?"
I think that's one of the -- I think
that's the most frequent reaction.
There have been a number of young
Asian-American people came up to us afterward,
and literally just thanked us -- and young black
women, too -- to thank us for doing this film,
because they felt that, somehow,
they have not been part of the story,
but through these two women,
they now are part of that story.
And so, that's something
that's been very gratifying.
I think -- and since we're wrapping up -- I
just want to say that this film, on one level,
is about the black radical tradition
and how it grants us an independent
existence that is an independent from,
you know, white supremacy, from
exploitation, from oppression;
that we can tap into a very rich history
of resistance, to find ourselves.
And Yuri was part of the
black radical tradition.
And through that whole experience, she now
also grant the younger Asian-Americans access
to that history and way of [inaudible].
So, I do want to say that has been --
because I don't want you to get away
and think this is just about these two women.
I think it's more than that.
Yeah.
>> Thank you.
