DVD | Color 73 min | Full Screen. Directed by Allan Holzman Produced by Allan Holzman Written by Cynthia Gates Fujikawa Narrated by Cynthia Gates Fujikawa
ISBN 978-0-8026-0115-5
Price:$31.95*Home Video includes Public Library Circulation rights.
ISBN 978-0-8026-0131-5
Price:$249.95**Academic and Institutional price including Public Performance rights for non-paying audiences.
Consumers Reviews
Awards
"1999 Best Documentary Feature"
-Cinequest San Jose Film Festival
"1999 Best Edited Documentary Feature"
-American Cinema Editors
"Best in Justice and Human Rights Award, The Heart of the Festival Award, and The People's Choice Award"
-1999 Vermont International Film Festival
Critics Reviews
"Allan Holzman's sensitive and intelligent adaptation of Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's one-woman stage show is a truly memorable experience, focusing on Fujikawa's father, Japenese-American character actor Jerry Jujikawa. While the elder Fujikawa was a familiar face from his extensive work on television and films, his private side (especially during his youth) remained a mystery until after his death. Piecing together her father's life during the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, Cynthia also discovered a sister she never knew existed, ultimately leading her to the shattering conclusion that she never truly knew her father - a supreme irony, given the fact that so many others knew him through his successful acting career. Both a testament to a family's skein of long-buried secrets and America's unapologetic racist attitudes towards its Asian population base (not only in the treatment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, but in the many stereotypical roles Fujikawa was forced to accept in his career), Old Man River debuts on DVD with the short film "Day of Remembrance," which compares the World War II-era treatment of Japanese-Americans with the wide civil rights abuses of America's Muslim population in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks (the message that America seems never to learn from its past racist mistakes is deepl"
-Video Librarian, May-June 2005
"Over the course of several decades following World War II, Jerry Fujikawa made numerous appearances in film and on TV and Broadway playing either an Asian stereotype or a villain. In a spellbinding, one-woman stage performance, his daughter, Cynthia Gates Fujikawa, weaves the compelling story of her father, her family, and the internment of Japanese Americans during the war. This production very effectively combines Fujikawa’s monolog with extensive 20th-century archival footage. There is a particular emphasis on the wartime years after President Roosevelt signed an executive order revoking the constitutional rights of Americans of Japanese descent. Fujikawa states that the government froze bank accounts, rounded up citizens, searched homes, imposed curfews and limits on travel, and ultimately evacuated U.S. citizens. The DVD includes a bonus short by Fujikawa, Day of Remembrance, a post-9/11 epilog that draws a comparison between the Japanese American experience and possible curtailment of freedoms of Americans of Arab descent. An exceptionally well-crafted program; highly recommended for academic and public libraries. --Susan Clark, Tokyo American Club Lib., Japan."
-Library Journal
"Cyndy Fujikawa is the kind of person you'd want sitting next to you at a dinner party: warm, witty, and a great storyteller. And, boy, does she have a story to tell."
-Chris Wright - THE BOSTON PHOENIX
"...And act of love...a poignant reminder of how difficult it is for parents and children to know one another."
-Jay Carr - The Boston Globe
"I'm often asked what one book or film on camp I'd recommend...I'd add 'Old Man River' to the list...In fact, I was blown away by it."
-Brian Niiya - Pacific Citizen
"...an impressive documentary depicting the quest of Cynthia Gates Fujikawa to understand her father, character actor Jerry Fujikawa. Blending fresh documentary filmmaking with archival photography and television, film and audio footage (including some priceless Jerry Lewis routines), 'Old Man River' is an amazingly seamless and creative journey into the unraveling of a father's hidden life, one that took him from the Manzanar internment camp to the battlefields of Europe during World War II."
-Daniel C. Tsang - Orange County Weekly
"Deeply personal and arresting one-woman show... evocative and emotionally searing... laced with irony."
-Paul Birchall, LA Weekly
SummaryJerry Fujikawa, a character actor, played every imaginable Asian stereotype in movies like Chinatown and television shows like M*A*S*H and Taxi. His daughter, Cynthia, an actress herself, never fully knew the man behind so many onscreen personas. And during a search for her family history, she discovered a secret life that her father had erased and taken to his grave.
Old Man River is an unusual portrait of a daughter trying to know her stoic and enigmatic Nisei father, years after his death. In a stirring collage of archival footage and still images, Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's one-woman performance creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of her father. The film also explores an infrequently addressed subject, American racism--specifically the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the profound effect incarceration had on Fujikawa and his family.
Also included on this DVD is Day of Remembrance, a short documentary which compares the internment of the Japanese Americans with the post-9/11 plight of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.
