Spencer Nakasako
Artist-In-Residence At Lycoming College
March 19-23, 2007
Believing that everyone should have access to the media of video and television
to tell their stories, California-based filmmaker Spencer Nakasako became the
artist mentor for a youth video program in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.
For the last fifteen years, Nakasako has been training Vietnamese, Laotian, and
Cambodian youths to make short videos based on their personal memories and
experiences.
Nakasako won a national Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a
Cambodian immigrant teenager. His recent work, Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary
about a Lu Mien teenage couple growing up too fast and too soon in Oakland,
California, aired nationally on PBS. His Creative Capital funded and most recent
film, Refugee, won the Inspirational Film Award at the Hamptons International
Film Festival. He also wrote the screenplay and codirected a feature film about
Hong Kong, "Life Is Cheap ... but Toilet Paper Is Expensive," with Wayne Wang.
Recently, he was awarded a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation In
addition to teaching film in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of
California at Berkeley, he has also had artist-in-residencies at the Walker Art
Center, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the University of Toronto,
and Stanford University. Nakasako recently returned from Cambodia where he has
been filming a diary project for public television.
While at Lycoming Spencer will work with Art Professor Lynn Estomin, project
director, Sociology Professor Betty McCall, and Education Professor Rachael
Hungerford and their students on a digital storytelling project with local youth
from CAPPA, the Community Alliance for Progressive Positive Action.
Spencer Nakasako will present his video Refugee (http://refugeethemovie.com) at
a public screening and artist talk on Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 7:30 PM in the
Barclay Lecture Hall (G-11) in the Heim Building at Lycoming College.