One of the first documentaries that left a deep impression on me was the 1987 Oscar-nominated film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?”
My Asian American psychology class, which I enrolled in my sophomore year to fulfill requirements for my psychology major and Asian American studies minor, brought me to the work. At the time, I’d never heard of Chin, nor did I know much about documentary as a medium. I remember being struck that the film featured an interview with the people who murdered Chin — and moreover, that those people were entirely unremorseful about their actions.
As I progressed with my minor, my studies introduced me to more and more films about APISA history. Gradually, I came to notice that many were created by one particular filmmaker, the same person behind the first documentary to linger in my mind to this day: Renee Tajima-Peña.
Tajima-Peña was born in Chicago but raised in Altadena, California. She became an activist at a young age, having grown up amidst the sociopolitical consequences of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the Chicano movement and the Asian American movement in the 1970s. However, her activism didn’t manifest into filmmaking until she was 21 years old. “I had so much anger inside, and I just wanted to say these things, and I thought film would be a good way of doing that,” she said in an interview with historian M. Rosalind Sagara in 2000.
At the start of Tajima-Peña’s filmmaking career, Asian American filmmaking was in its infancy. As a result, she had the freedom to set its foundations. She was a founding member of the Center for Asian American Media and the first paid director at Asian CineVision, and she also helped launch the Asian American International Film Festival and UC Santa Cruz’s social documentation M.F.A. program. However, these accomplishments did not come easily.
Tajima-Peña did not go to film school; instead, she majored in East Asian studies and sociology at Harvard University. After she graduated in 1980, she watched her white male classmates become TV writers while she waited in vain to hear back from the studios and networks she wrote to. After limited success, she turned to independent film. “Asian Americans were excluded, so we created our own institutions and our own alternatives,” she told Sagara.
“Who Killed Vincent Chin?” — which was co-directed with filmmaker Christine Choy — was Tajima-Peña’s first documentary, but far from her last. In her 1997 film “My America… or Honk If You Love Buddha,” she parallels an exploration of her own identity with an exploration of Asian American identity throughout U.S. history. Her 2001 film, “Labor Women,” highlights the role APISA communities play in the labor movement via three Asian American women advocating for labor justice.
Still, she is perhaps best-known for her 2020 PBS docuseries, “Asian Americans,” which gained traction when its release coincided with a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. The transmedia work became a source providing greater understanding of the historical context shaping the conditions APISA communities face today. “The whole stereotype … of Asian Americans, [that] either they’re in Silicon Valley being technonerds, or very passive and apathetic,” she said to Sagara. “It’s just not true. I go to colleges around the country and people are standing up all over. I want people to know that.”
Renee Tajima-Peña’s works jump-started my journey toward learning about my community’s history back when I was 19. From her, I learned that the first Asian immigrants to settle down in the U.S. were Filipino. I learned that Asian Americans have rich histories as activists and organizers and changemakers. Most importantly, I learned that Asian American women can be storytellers who inspire and educate and act, just like her.
Correction: A previous version of this article used the acronym “APIDA.” All instances of the term have been changed to “APISA,” which is more reflective of the heterogeneity in South Asian communities.