Faculty of Art
Taught by ACAM faculty and filmmaker Alejandro Yoshizawa, ACAM_V 350-001 – Asian Canadian Community-Based Media offers an introduction to techniques and practices of digital media production within the context of ethical community engagement.
Students enrolled in this course are expected to produce a short film on topics and issues pertinent to local Asian Canadian communities in Vancouver. Through readings and discussions focusing on topics including race and representation, media and technology, oral history, deep listening, and the ethics of community-based research, this course encourages students to critically reflect on their participation in filmmaking as a tool for community engagement. To showcase the course’s teaching and learning outcomes, and to facilitate broader conversations around issues explored in student films, a public screening will be held at the end of the term.
Beyond the scope of the course, our student films produced through this course have consistently been featured in the annual Vancouver Asian Film Festival: Radicalizing Intimacies by Stephanie Fung and Joanna Yang (2014); Cantonese: Passing by Elizabeth Cheong and Lisa Lee (2015); and Under Fire by Christy Fong and Denise Fong (2016); and Flagged by Mimi Nguyen (2017).
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Mary Kitagawa was born on Salt Spring Island where she lived until the uprooting. After her father’s arrest, her mother and their five children were sent to Hastings Park, Greenwood, Magrath, Alberta, Popoff, Bay Farm, Slocan, Rosebery, New Denver, Magrath and Cardston, Alberta. She graduated from Cardston High and went on to Trinity College, University of Toronto. At UBC, she received her secondary teaching credential and taught at Kitsilano Secondary. She and her husband Tosh belonged to the Greater Vancouver JCCA Human Rights Committee for 23 years. In 2006, they were involved in the renaming of the Howard Charles Green building to the Douglas Jung building in downtown Vancouver. In 2008, they began lobbying for UBC to give honorary degrees to the 76 Japanese Canadian students who were expelled from UBC in 1942. Success was achieved in 2012 when UBC held a special congregation for those students, digitized historical documents pertaining to their lives, and created a new minor degree in the Faculty of Arts, the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program. Mary is on the Community Council of the Landscapes of Injustice project at the University of Victoria. Mary and Tosh continue to educate the public by speaking out about Japanese Canadian history and social justice.
John Price is Professor of Pacific and Asian Canadian history at the University of Victoria. He moved to Japan at the age of 18 and, after returning to Canada, did his PhD at UBC. He is the author of Japan Works: Power and Paradox in Postwar Industrial Relations (Cornell University Press), Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific (UBC Press), and a recent working paper, “Seventy-Five Years is Long Enough: Will the BC Government Finally Acknowledge and Address Its Role in the Uprooting of Japanese Canadians?” He currently directs the research project, “Asian Canadians on Vancouver Island: Race, Indigeneity and the Transpacific,” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and is completing two new works: Searching for Victoria, a biography of Victoria Chung, the first Asian Canadian to graduate from University of Toronto Medical School, and Beyond White Supremacy, a history of Asian Canadians and decolonization in Canada.
