Skip to main content

Who's Going to Pay for These Donuts Anyway?

Janice Tanaka

1992 00:58:00 United StatesEnglishColorMono4:3Video
Tags:
Family, Memory

Description

This experimental documentary chronicles Janice Tanaka’s search for a father she has not seen since she was three years old. Possessing only sketchy information—that he had protested the internment of Japanese Americans citizens after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by writing letters to the President, that he had been arrested by the FBI and subsequently diagnosed as a schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies and institutionalized—Tanaka searched for her missing father for three and a half years. Tanaka blends social and personal memory into an evocative portrait of identity and loss, addressing issues of culture from the perspective of someone who feels pulled in two directions. Blending documentary, diary, narrative and experimental genres, Who’s Going to Pay is emotionally powerful and beautifully made.

About Janice Tanaka

California-based Janice Tanaka is considered a pioneer in the use of processed images within experimental narrative form. She brings a painter’s sensibility to her intricately textured video collages that blend social and political observations, philosophical inquiries, and personal introspection. Her work uses original footage, appropriated media images, and densely layered electronic processing to transform the autobiographical into the universal. Her videos treat issues of Asian American history and identity, from the enduring trauma of internment camps during World War II to the blending of cultural values from the Old to New World.