The University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu welcomes Distinguished Visiting Scholar Tadashi Nakamura, director of the award-winning documentary Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings. He will host a screening of the film and a discussion about filmmaking, art and activism on March 19, 12:30 p.m. at the UH West Oʻahu campus Building D237.
Nakamura, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, was named one of CNN’s Young People Who Rock for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as well as one of the 30 Most Influential Asian Americans Under 30 by the popular website AngryAsianMan.com.
Nakamura’s trilogy of documentary films on the Japanese American experience, Yellow Brotherhood (2003), Pilgrimage (2007) and A Song for Ourselves (2009) have garnered over 20 awards at film festivals around the world with Pilgrimage being one of 83 short films out of 7,500 submissions selected for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Nakamura’s Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings paints a compelling portrait of an inspiring and inventive musician whose virtuoso skills on the ukulele have transformed all previous notions of the instrument’s potential. The film won the 2013 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival Audience Award and Gotham Film Audience Award, and recently aired on PBS.
The event is free and open to the public and made possible by the UH West Oʻahu Distinguished Visiting Scholars Program.
