AAPI Filmmaker Spotlight: "Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story" with Jennifer Takaki

Screening and Panel Discussion on Media Representation and Community Activism 

For 50 years, Chinese American photographer Corky Lee documented the celebrations, struggles and daily lives of Asian American Pacific Islanders with epic focus. Determined to push mainstream media to include AAPI culture in the visual record of American history, Lee produced an astonishing archive of nearly a million compelling photographs. His work takes on new urgency with the alarming rise in anti-Asian attacks during the Covid pandemic. Jennifer Takaki’s intimate portrait reveals the triumphs and tragedies of the man behind the lens.

Join us for a screening of Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story before its premiere on PBS. Followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker Jennifer Takaki and Dr. Camilla Fojas from the School of Social Transformation. Everyone is welcome!

View the Trailer:  https://photographicjustice.com

Film running time: 87 minutes / Language: English / Not Rated / Documentary Feature (USA)

Official Selection: DOC NYC, CAAMFest, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF), Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF).

Presented by: The Sidney Poitier New American Film School and Scriptless

Panelists: 

Jennifer Takaki, Director/Producer

Filmmaker Jennifer Takaki is a fourth generation Japanese American from Colorado. She began her career in journalism at a Denver TV station and later moved to Hong Kong to work with Encore International. In Hong Kong she produced English-based news programming broadcast in China, India, and the Middle East via Rupert Murdoch’s STAR-TV. In New York, she produced and directed “Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story” which premiered at DOC NYC and was supported by the Ford Foundation and The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). She was awarded the prestigious Better Angels Lavine Fellowship in 2023.

Camilla Fojas, School Director & Professor in the School of Social Transformation

Camilla Fojas is Foundation Professor and director of the School of Social Transformation. Her research explores mediated cultures of the Americas and the Pacific through the axes of empire, security and race within the context of the expanding borders the United States and with a specific focus on the U.S.-Mexico border. She has published or co-edited nine books on these topics, most recently "Border Optics: Surveillance Cultures on the US-Mexico Frontier" (NYU Press, 2021).