JANM is proud to present Third Act at the Laemmle Monica Film Center from Friday, September 26 – Thursday, October 2. Bring your friends and family for this sneak peek theatrical run of this film that was an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Variety calls it “a realistic portrait of America” and “a story of perseverance and how some people make their life’s work stand for more than just a personal accomplishment.”
About the Film
Generations of artists call Robert A. Nakamura “the godfather of Asian American media,” but his son and the director of JANM’s Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center, Tadashi Nakamura, calls him Dad. As Parkinson’s disease clouds Robert’s memory, Tad sets out to retrieve his story—and in the process discovers his own.
Using the lessons Robert taught him, Tad deciphers the legacy of an aging man who was just a child when he survived America’s concentration camps, a successful photographer who gave it up to tell his own story, an activist at the dawn of a social movement—and a father whose struggles won his son freedoms that eluded Japanese Americans of his generation. Throughout the years they made films together, with Robert always by Tad’s side. Third Act was their last.
Schedule
Related Article
Tadashi Nakamura’s Third Act: A Son’s Tribute to Legacy and Loss
Discover Nikkei talked to Tad about the creative process, what it was like to make a film about family, and more.