Third Act

Filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura found fame with such activist-based work as 1972’s “Manzanar,” a recollection of his time at the notorious WWII internment camp. In this three-part saga, his documentarian son tells his story, uncovering layers of generational trauma, chronic illness, and what we leave behind before we say goodbye.Generations of artists call Robert A. Nakamura the Godfather of Asian American film, but his son, Tad, calls him Dad. As the filmmaking son of a filmmaking legend, Tad uses the lessons his dad taught him to decipher the legacy of an aging man who was a child survivor of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, 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 have won his son freedoms that eluded Japanese Americans of his generation. As Parkinson’s disease clouds his father’s memory, Tad sets out to retrieve his story—and in the process discovers his own. The two have made films together, with Robert always by Tad’s side. THIRD ACT is most likely the last.