The half-hour documentary, Labor Women, is a portrait of three immigrant daughters who are part of a new generation transforming the American labor movement.
Quynh Nguyen is a trilingual organizer who moves easily between Vietnamese, Spanish, and English as she mobilizes meatpackers in their demands for a union contract. Sri Lankan American Karla Zombro confronts the challenge of being a lead organizer as well as openly gay within the Respect at LAX Living Wage campaign for airport workers fighting for a contract with the Argenbright company. Jun Chong is a Korean American activist with a labor-community coalition in South Central Los Angeles. She represents the most marginalized of workers - welfare recipients who are being forced into workfare programs. Nguyen, Zombro, and Chong are nothing like the albeit rare enough images of young Asian American women you would usually see in the media, whether the submissive lotus blossom of the past or the young dot-commer "model minority" of today. They are passionate advocates for social change, and theirs is the story of the American labor movement as it is becoming in the 21st century.
Renee Tajima-Peña has become a chronicler of the American scene with her award-winning films Who Killed Vincent Chin? (PBS) and MY AMERICA...or Honk if You Love Buddha. Her other credits include the PBS series The New Americans (Mexico story segment) and My Journey Home; Lab or Women, The Last Beat Movie (Sundance Channel); The Best Hotel on Skid Row (Home Box Office), Jennifer’s in Jail (Lifetime Television), Declarations: All Men Are Created Equal? (PBS), What Americans Really Think of the Japanese (Fujisankei,) and Yellow Tale Blues. She has been a collaborator on two multi-media performances pieces. She created the video Skate Manzanar for Roger Shimomura’s “Amnesia”, which premiered at the Bellevue Art Museum; and an audio phone sex piece for 1-800-DESIRE, performed by Jessica Hagedorn and Robbie MacCauley in Shu Lea Cheang’s installation, “Those Fluttering Objects of Desire” at the 1993 Whitney Biennialle.
This year, Tajima-Peña was honored with the Alpert Award in the Arts. Her previous honors include an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary, a Peabody Award, a Dupont-Columbia Award, the James Wong Howe “Jimmie” Award, the Justice in Action Award, and an International Documentary Association Achievement Award, the Media Achievement Award from MANAA, the Steve Tatsukawa Memorial Award and the APEX Excellence in the Arts Award. She has twice earned Fellowships in Documentary Film from both the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Foundation on the Arts. Her works have been broadcast around the world and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, London Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and many other venues. Tajima-Peña was formerly a film critic for The Village Voice, a cultural commentator for National Public Radio, and associate editor of The Independent Film & Video Monthly. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Social Documentation Program of the Community Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
tajimapena@aol.com
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