DOCUMENTARY ABOUT JAPANESE AMERICANS LIVING IN JAPAN TO SCREEN IN THE LOS ANGELES ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL

Finding Home, a one-hour documentary, is the latest effort by Southern California-based media artist and LMU Professor, Art Nomura. Supported by a 2003-04 Fulbright Research Grant, Nomura spent the fall/winter of 2003 in Japan capturing visuals and conducting interviews for this project. This updated version of the documentary features a revised voiceover by the video maker and additional visual elements. Art Nomura will be present for a Q & A session after the film's screening.

Finding Home is about Japanese Americans who have decided to live in Japan rather than America. The video examines what they have gained and lost with this decision. The six Japanese Americans featured were selected from an initial interview pool of fifty individuals. Responses to questions about lifestyle, identity, personal evolution, and choice of residence, provide insight into the expatriate experience of those who have chosen to live in their ancestral homeland. Additionally, Nomura, a sansei (third generation Japanese American), and a first-time visitor to Japan at age 57, shares his impressions of Japan throughout the documentary.

Many of the people interviewed for Finding Home are featured in the Real People section of the Discover Nikkei website. Art Nomura is currently writing a book on the larger experience of producing the documentary and living in Japan. It is slated for release later this year.

Finding Home will screen at 7:30 pm, May 9, 2006 at the recently completed National Center for the Preservation of Democracy at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Directions to the Center and Museum are available at http://www.janm.org/visit/map.php. Ticket and Film Festival information is available at http://www.vconline.org/ff06/prog_47.html#1.