Old age is not for sissies. 40 14 TANGO IN TORRANCE follow the director’s mother, a ballroom dancer, on her journey through forgetfulness. She loses the ability to speak, except for two numbers. Her painful dark past becomes a blur and she finally begins to enjoy life coloring on a blank slate.

Tongva/Kizh talk stories, tales told by Mexicans and later, Issei settlers, told again and again, the legends of a river. One strange stormy night, filled with whispers and bebop between raindrops, a shadow stepped into traces of glimmering jewels, on murky rapids and found the River of Little Tokyo.

Many are familiar with the three civil rights marches (collectively known as the Selma to Montgomery marches) that happened in Alabama in March of 1965. There was however a fourth march with Martin Luther King Jr. and a young 21-year-old Japanese American activist. This fourth march has been forgotten by time.

Every Monday (rain or shine) 30 to 40 seniors gather to jam on their ukuleles to jam and have fun! This group, Hui Aloha Na Makana (Gift of Love), began in 2000. Invited to share their music to Elders at retirement and nursing homes, birthdays celebration, and special events, they sing in Hawaiian, Japanese, Pilipino and in English. Wherever they go, Hui Aloha Na spreads good will, socialize…and especially, have fun.

Family wisdom is shared across distance and time. We work together, each doing their part, each one sharing what we know. We draw from the lessons of the past and pass them on generation to generation. Flowers bloom, fruits ripen. We feed them, nourish them, love them. The bounty grows. At the end of the day, we tend our garden.

“Los Manzaneros” is a loose knit group of multi-racial educators/political activists, and artists, who been connected by over 40 years of camaraderie and political activism. The treatment of Japanese Americans’ incarceration at Manzanar was similar to the violations of civil rights of other people of color in the U.S. The Manzanar Pilgrimage renews our bonds as we struggle to fight racism and selected privilege through “Here in Manzanar."

Armed with a 48-star American flag, a Santa Clara judge of Guamanian descent — inspired by Judge Roberta Hayashi, Fred Korematsu, and the injustice of the Japanese American Internment camps — embarks on a journey to honor those remaining survivors who were imprisoned during WWII for being of Japanese descent without due justice.

Hideo Kubota was a Hawaii Nisei who was arrested at the start of WWII by the FBI. He would be held for the next three years in the Arizona desert. Using his grandfather’s voice, poet Garrett Kaoru Hongo writes to the Chinese Poets being held in detention at the Angel Island Immigration Station.

The history of Japanese Americans is as diverse as the community itself. Following their surrender at the end of World War II, over 500,000 Japanese were forcibly captured and sent to Soviet labor camps called Gulags. SONG OF SIBERIA is a story of survival, and of one post-war immigrant and his will to live.