J.T. Takagi

A lesbian college graduate, trying to bankroll her own photography business, works as a high-priced New York City escort.

Robert Castle is the idealistic pastor of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem, and also the cousin of filmmaker Jonathan Demme. Demme's affectionate portrait of his cousin traces Castle's story, beginning with his first parish assignment, in New Jersey in the early 1960s, in an increasingly African-American-populated neighborhood rocked by violence and civil rights protests. The film raises intimate discussions of race, faith and family, while also showing Castle's daily routine as a pastor.

This satiric comedy takes place in a building on New York's multi-ethnic Lower East Side. Four neighbors form an uneasy alliance after a case worker from family court is accidentally killed in their building.

In 1988 it was exactly one hundred years ago that the Nicaraguan writer Ruben Dario published his first work. Azul was the first publication of modern poetry in the Spanish language. Legiarda-Laura has given the same title to his film, because he wanted to show the Nicaraguan poetic inheritance. 24 poems are read, interspersed with interviews and discussions. Thus, the cultural soul of Nicaragua is mapped out.

Depicts what happens when students K-8 discuss LGBT-related topics in age-appropriate ways. Shot in six public and private schools (in San Francisco and New York City, as well as Madison, Wisconsin, and Cambridge, Massachusetts), It’s Elementary models excellent teaching about family diversity, name-calling, stereotypes, community building, and more.

They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.

In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, the monumental building that was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed.

The long-suppressed story of 12,000 Japanese Americans who dared to resist the U.S. government's program of mass incarceration during World War II. Branded as 'disloyals' and re-imprisoned at Tule Lake Segregation Center, they continued to protest in the face of militarized violence, and thousands renounced their U.S. citizenship. Giving voice to experiences that have been marginalized for over 70 years, this documentary challenges the nationalist, one-sided ideal of wartime 'loyalty.'

This documentary examines the re-settlement of South-East Asian refugees in the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The film begins with a montage of riveting footage depicting the devastating effects of the war. It then unveils the mixed reception given Vietnamese refugees in the United States, from battles with local fishermen in Monterey, California, to conflicts in Philadelphia where their arrival in the city's poorest neighborhoods kindled resentment in the Black community. The film also explores their struggle to cope with life in the U.S. and maintain their identity.

A look at three U.S. cities, which were part of many communities that violently forced African American families to flee in post-reconstruction America.

“It ain’t easy…being green” is the favorite expression of Stormé DeLarverie, a woman whose life flouted prescriptions of gender and race. During the 1950s and '60s she toured the black theater circuit as a mistress of ceremonies and the sole male impersonator of the legendary Jewel Box Revue, America’s first integrated female impersonation show and forerunner of La Cage aux Folles.

One in a series of 13 documentaries on renowned American poets produced by the New York Center for Visual History. Described by director St. Clair Bourne as “a narrative performance documentary,” this category-defiant film on the life of poet and writer Hughes and the times in which he lived and worked moves from America to Senegal to Paris, from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance to the Black Pride awakening of the 1960s.

Based on the play, "Pigeons," by Ginny Lim, this film focuses on the meeting between an older immigrant and younger American-born woman living in Chinatown. The linkages in their pasts and possible futures unfold as their friendship grows.

They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics

This documentary brings to the public, for the first time, a story that was classified as secret by the US government for over four decades. Exploring the roots and legacy of the Cold War on the Chinese American community during the 1950s and the 1960s, it presents first hand accounts of seven men and women's experiences of being hunted down, jailed and targeted for deportation in America.

This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and Whites live in a complex world of cotton, work, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community is framed against the harsh realities of civil , religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare historical footage and interviews of Delta residents are combined to create this unprecedented document of inter-ethnic relations in the American South.

A revolutionary political moment is captured firsthand by two independent women filmmakers shooting inside refugee settlements in Zambia and Angola in 1985. Depicting the significant role of women in this struggle for independence, this film explores the lives of exiled women workers attempting to free their country from illegal exploitation.

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