Women's Film Festival San Diego: The Ito Sisters
The 2018 Women’s Film Festival San Diego presents as part of its inaugural Summer Series:
THE ITO SISTERS: AN AMERICAN STORY
A documentary film by Antonia Grace Glenn
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director and producer Antonia Grace Glenn.
An Official Selection of the 2017 Berkeley Video & Film Festival (Grand Festival Award and Audience Award), the 2018 Sacramento Japanese Film Festival (Emerging Filmmaker Award) and the 2018 Women’s Film Festival San Diego, THE ITO SISTERS captures the rarely told stories of the earliest Japanese immigrants to the United States and their American-born children. In particular, the film focuses on the experiences of Issei (or immigrant) and Nisei (or first generation born in the US) women, whose voices have largely been excluded from American history.
The three sisters at the heart of the film – Nancy, Lillian and Hedy – are memorable and engaging characters, who in their 80s and 90s share stories of humor, hardship and heartbreak, dating back to their father’s immigration from Japan to the US in 1897. The sisters offer a rare first-hand account of their family’s struggle to become American, in the face of a series of natural and man-made disasters. The family’s chronicle is set against the backdrop of the Anti-Japanese Movement, a 60-year campaign by politicians, journalists, landowners and others that culminated in the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II.
THE ITO SISTERS is written, directed and produced by Antonia Grace Glenn and edited and produced by Gregory Pacificar, with original music by Dave Iwataki. The film features scholar commentary from Evelyn Nakano Glenn (UC Berkeley), Dorinne Kondo (USC), Michael Omi (UC Berkeley) and Jere Takahashi (UC Berkeley).