JANM is proud to present Third Act at the Chicago History Museum on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. 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.

Following the screening, Lisa Doi and traci kato-kiriyama will join Nakamura for an insightful panel discussion.

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