Old Man River

Running time: N/A

Unique among this year's films is Allan Holzman and Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's Old Man River, a remarkable look at a familiar face from TV and film: character actor Jerry Fujikawa (M*A*S*H's Whiplash Wang and the gardener in Chinatown). What makes this film so intriguing is its presentation - a one-woman performance where Ms. Fujikawa learns how much of a stranger her father really was to her. This is a story of her uncovering and discovering a father very different from the one she thought she knew; a man whose life was destroyed and re-made. Born and raised in Salinas, Jerry Fujikawa might have remained in the family beet farming business, were it not for his secret desire to be an actor. And then came WWII. Forced into internment camps, Fujikawa lost his wife, his family, everything. Ms. Fujikawa's touching story tells not just of her father's tragic losses, but of her realization that she was never told of her father's previous life, and of her journey to understand her father's shikataganai, the Japanese belief that in the face of tragedy, silence is the only honorable response.