Tenderloin Stories

Project Title: Tenderloin Stories
Recipient Organization: The Vietnamese Youth Development Center
Lead Artist: Spencer Nakasako
Genre and Date Awarded: Media Arts, December 1995
Premiered: September 13, 1996 (first community screening); March 1997 (film festival premiere)

Filmmaker Spencer Nakasako collaborated with Southeast Asian youth at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District to create four short works about their life experiences. The videos were filmed with Hi-8 camcorders and produced, directed, and edited by the young participants working in partnership with Nakasako. Collaborating youth artists were Rudy Choy, Aram Collier, Sarah Diep, Christina Duculan, Cindy Heng, Peter Hep, Jesse Huiynh, Sally Mounlasy, Chrystal Ng, Ra Sek, and Toubi Sourichone.

The finished pieces were screened on video monitors in public and private spaces in the neighborhood—Glide Memorial Church’s Freedom Hall, the Tenderloin Recreation Center, 340 Eddy Street Apartment Buildings, and Boeddeker Park. The films also were shown at the 1997 International Asian American Film Festival and on PBS. Two of the short works won youth media awards and one was broadcast in 1999 on HBO Family’s “30 By 30 Kids Flicks” program.

The project focused on stories created by 1.5s—young refugees who were born in Southeast Asia but raised in America, who are “too young to be steeped in the homeland culture of their parents, but old enough to experience cultural disaffection as immigrants in the United States.” Most of them live in poverty, in cramped apartments and some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods—such as the Tenderloin. Nakasako and VYDC sought to immerse viewers in the1.5s’ world: Making use of the intimacy and immediacy that is possible in handheld Hi-8 footage, they put the cameras in the young artists’ hands.

Nakasako wrote, “I’m not a teacher by design…[and am] satisfied personally by what the kids produce. Where this program is totally different from a traditional film school is the collaboration between me and the kids. It’s their film, but it’s ‘our’ work and our project.” His collaborators toured their neighborhoods and homes, talked with family and friends, and narrated their own experiences. From this material, they took different approaches to storytelling: Christina Duculan’s “Just Deal Wit It,” is a drama about a community dealing with the tragic death; Sarah Diep’s “Seven of Us,” presents a day in the life of a young Vietnamese girl and her videogame-playing girlfriends; Aram Collier and Rudy Choy’s “Express Lane,” is an experimental comedy thriller; and Ra Sek’s “Get off You Koot!” is a drama/dance performance about a young Cambodian who dreams of break dancing his way out of the “hood.”

Spencer Nakasako has two decades of experience as an independent film and video producer, with credits for a wide variety of community-based videos, documentaries, and dramatic features. Prior to undertaking this project, Spencer Nakasako had been a video artist-in-residence for five years at the Vietnamese Development Center and the East Bay Asian Youth Center in East Oakland. Working in this context he had completed other major projects, including the award-winning documentary a.k.a. Don Bonus with Sokly Ny. New to the production of Tenderloin Stories was having an on-site non-linear edit system at VYDC along with a full-time trainer, Sean Thomas, available to the youth, which “allowed the kids to not only constantly experiment with their shows, but to become proficient editors, and add a finished, polished look.”

VYDC, founded in 1979 by Vietnamese refugees, provides an array of social service, artistic, and educational programs to an increasingly diverse population of immigrant youth from Southeast Asian. The agency’s mission supports and values young people, promotes their strengths and values, and reinforces the worth of culture, tradition, and diversity. VYDC began its first video workshop in the summer of 1989 and today manages a well-equipped and highly successful Youth Media Lab. VYDC was integrally involved in the development and presentation of Tenderloin Stories by convening the participating youth, providing workspace and weekly peer counseling to support their involvement, and making the contacts for screening the films in the neighborhood. The project emerged from VYDC’s work style and dedication to youth, its belief that “the young people should have the opportunity to come up with their own ideas with a minimum of interference from the adult staff.”

LEAD ARTIST

Spencer Nakasako has two decades of experience as an independent film and video producer, with credits that range from community-based videos to award-winning documentaries and dramatic features. Nakasako is one of the most highly regarded mentors of young media makers in the country and regularly consults with youth media programs.

Exhibited and broadcast nationally and internationally, his works include Life is Cheap…, co-directed with Wayne Wang, and the documentaries Monterey’s Boat People and Kelly Loves Tony, both of which aired on public television. His documentary with VYDC student Sokly Ny, a.k.a. Don Bonus, won a National Emmy for Cultural Programming in 1994 and the Best Documentary prize at the 1995 San Francisco International Film Festival. His most recently completed sixty-minute documentary, Refugee, created with Mike Siv, also explores the stories of Tenderloin youth. Refugee premiered in 2003 at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, screened at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and, most recently was chosen by the Independent Documentary Association as eligible for an Oscar nomination.

Documentary Films

• Producer/Director, Refugee, 60-minute documentary. Funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), 2003.
• Producer/Director, Kelly Loves Tony, 60-minute camcorder diary of two Lao teenage refugees. Executive produced by Wayne Wang and NAATA, 1998.
• Producer/Director, a.k.a. Don Bonus, co-directed with Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny, 60-minute documentary about life as seen by an 18-year-old Cambodian refugee, 1992-95.
• Field Producer, School Colors, Two and a half-hour documentary that takes a look at integration, diversity, and multiculturalism at Berkeley High School. Co-produced by Telesis Productions and Center for Investigative Reporting for Frontline on PBS, 1996.
• Producer/Director, Talking History, Half-hour documentary revealing the history of Asian women in the United States. Produced for Asian Women United, funded by the U.S. Office of Education, 1984.

Selected Festivals

• Los Angeles Independent Film Festival (Refugee)
• San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (Refugee, Kelly Loves Tony, Talking History)
• Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (Kelly Loves Tony)
• Sydney Film Festival (Kelly Loves Tony, a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Taos Talking Pictures Festival (Kelly Loves Tony)
• Berlin Film Festival (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• New York Video Festival (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Galway Film Festival (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Robert Flaherty Film Seminar (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• New York International Asian American Film Festival (Talking History)

Selected Broadcasts

• POV Broadcast, PBS National (Kelly Loves Tony, June 1998) ( a.k.a. Don Bonus, June 1996)
• Nederlandse Omproep Stitching Broadcast (NOS), The Netherlands, 1996 (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• National PBS Broadcast (Talking History, 1985)

Selected Awards

• National Emmy Award (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Prix Visions du Reel Award, Visions du Reel (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Jurror’s Choice Award, Charlotte Film and Video Festival (a.k.a. Don Bonus)
• Special Award, National Educational Media Network (a.k.a. Don Bonus)