Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
CWC Docs: Third Act
- Tuesday, November 10, 2026 / 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (91 minutes)
- With Tadashi Nakamura (filmmaker)
Generations of artists call Robert A. Nakamura the “Godfather of Asian American Media,” but his son Tad calls him Dad. Drawing on the lessons his father taught him, Tad sets out to make the film that he “always knew he had to make,” charting his father’s legacy as a child survivor of the WWII Japanese American incarceration and a successful commercial photographer-turned-activist filmmaker. A co-founder of the Asian American media organization Visual Communications, Robert made some of the first films to explore Asian American identity and memory from a personal vantage point. Third Act (2025) intricately weaves together an array of archival materials and interviews to reflect on his creative eye and decades of filmmaking as a form of resistance. As Parkinson’s disease begins to cloud Robert’s memory, the film shifts focus into a deeply personal meditation on familial activism, art, grief, and the enduring bonds of fatherhood.
Filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura will join moderator Alexander Cho (Asian American Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Third Act.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Tadashi Nakamura (filmmaker)
Tadashi Nakamura is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and the Director of the Watase Media Arts Center, a production company of the Japanese American National Museum. Tadashi was named CNN’s “Young People Who Rock” for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. In 2025, he returned to Sundance to premiere his latest film Third Act, about his pioneering filmmaker father, Robert A. Nakamura. With over twenty years of filmmaking experience, his films include Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement (2024), Benkyodo: The Last Maju Shop in J-Town (2023), Atomic Cafe: The Nosiest Corner in J-Town (2020), Mele Murals (2016), Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings (2013), A Song for Ourselves (2009), and Pilgrimage (2006). Tadashi has an M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz and a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA. He made the DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list in 2019 and was a 2020 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow, a 2022 Sundance Asian American Fellow, and a 2024 Rockwood Documentary Leaders Fellow.
Moderator Alexander Cho (Asian American Studies, UCSB)
Alexander Cho is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He teaches classes at UCSB on Asian Americans in media, as well as Asian American gender and sexuality. His monograph, Affect’s Engine: Race and Queerness on Peak Tumblr, is forthcoming from University of California Press in January 2027. He is also co-editor of A Tumblr Book: Platforms and Cultures, and co-author of The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality. His research has appeared in journals such as Information, Communication & Society and New Media & Society, as well as The Proceedings of CHI. Prior to his academic research and teaching, Professor Cho was a journalist in the LGBTQIA+ media, most notably as the Editor of the Southern California newsmagazine Frontiers, where he secured the worldwide exclusive coming out interview with Star Trek’s Asian American icon, George Takei.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Department of Asian American Studies.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.