Written by Lila Wright; edited by Ben Everett.
The Our Communities, Our Neighbors film series extends the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation’s (CRPF) reach through documentary storytelling, capturing the voices and experiences of Tacoma’s diverse communities and leaders, and preserving these histories to inspire generations to come. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the CRPF had to adapt to new conditions and find alternative ways of bringing people together. To accommodate social distancing, the Tacoma Moon Festival (TMF) was adapted to a virtual format by collecting and archiving videos of the Chinese Reconciliation Park’s history, along with dance and musical performances from Tacoma’s heritage groups, so that visitors could safely appreciate the cultural diversity of the Puget Sound region from home. It was this experience of producing a virtual TMF that led the CRPF to recognize a need for archival, accessible documentation of the many communities and leaders they have featured on this stage. In response, the CRPF created the Our Communities, Our Neighbors series, an open-ended project that continues year after year.
Each film in the series highlights one of Tacoma’s diverse heritage groups and celebrates leaders within that community. The CRPF takes a hands-off approach to filmmaking, providing the production and release tools while allowing each featured community to shape its own story. Too often, these heritage groups are lumped together rather than being recognized for their individuality; by letting local leaders tell their own stories, the series highlights their distinct traditions and accomplishments. Since the success of the first film in 2022, the CRPF has partnered with Tacoma’s Grand Cinema to host its premieres. This collaboration brings new audiences to the Grand Cinema and allows featured individuals to see themselves, their communities, and their accomplishments celebrated on the big screen. Most recently, the newest film, Lyle Quasim: Show Up, Suit Up, and Engage!, sold out two theaters at the Grand.
Since the series began in 2022, the CRPF has worked with seven different communities in Tacoma to tell their stories on screen. The first film, “Executive Order 9066: All Persons of Japanese Ancestry,” was created in collaboration with Merilee Tanbara, a third-generation Japanese-American Tacoma resident writing a historical fiction novel about the first Japanese immigrants to Tacoma in 1910 and their American-born children. The film follows the creation of that novel, taking viewers from life in Tacoma’s bustling, culturally rich Japantown to WWII concentration camps and, finally, back to Tacoma and the struggle to rebuild against racial prejudice and suspicion. The CRPF also partnered with Brian Parker, film instructor at Bates Technical College, giving his students a front-row seat to professional filmmaking.
The second film, “The Resting Place,” tells the story of how Tacoma’s Vietnamese community came together to establish a shared cemetery to honor members who had passed. The topic was suggested by community member Minh-Anh Hodge, who highlighted the community’s remarkable achievement in pooling resources to create a general fund for members’ funerals — an accomplishment the CRPF would never have known to feature without asking the community to tell its own story. The film was produced by Tina A. Huynh, assistant professor of music education at the University of Puget Sound, who researches community diversity and music-making in Vietnamese communities across the United States, and directed by Kate Hoyt, assistant professor of communication at Pacific Lutheran University. It was edited by Hallie Harper, a 2021 PLU alumna.
The third film, “Tacoma Method,” centers on the making of the opera Tacoma Method, a powerful telling of the 1885 expulsion with a historically grounded libretto by Beijing-born poet Zhang Er and music by Gregory Youtz. Through interviews with the Asian heritage singers and actors who performed in the opera, the film traces the history of the Chinese expulsion and the City of Destiny’s efforts to reconcile with its past. The film was produced by PLU Professor Emeritus Joanne Lisosky, who has gone on to produce several more entries in the series. The full opera featured in the film is also available on YouTube.
The fourth film, “Culture Over Killing Fields: One Woman’s Journey,” also produced by Joanne Lisosky, turns to Tacoma’s Cambodian community and recounts the history of the Killing Fields — the state-sponsored genocide of more than a million people following the Cambodian Civil War under the Communist Party of Kampuchea. The film follows Tacoma resident Rady Oum, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide who has devoted herself to sharing her culture with her adopted community. Oum, founder and director of Cambodian Classical and Folk Dance of the Northwest, discusses her childhood, her immigration to the U.S., and her use of traditional Cambodian dance to teach younger generations about their heritage and help them navigate life as bicultural young people in a modern American city.
The fifth film, “Horizon Identities: AAPI at UWT,” follows University of Washington Tacoma alumnus and filmmaker Nuk Suwanchote as he returns to his alma mater to explore the growing community of Asian Pacific Islander students, staff, and faculty on the Tacoma campus. Members of the UWT community discuss the complexities of navigating a bicultural identity in a diverse city and reflect on how a college campus can serve as a space for exploring that identity. Since making this film, Suwanchote has gone on to produce several more projects and has become an influential figure in Seattle’s independent filmmaking community.
The sixth film, “Bang the Drum: Taiko in Tacoma,” directed by Joanne Lisosky, features Wendy Hamai’s journey with Taiko drumming and her efforts to bring Taiko culture to Tacoma. Alongside other Taiko enthusiasts, Hamai founded Tacoma’s first Taiko performing group at the Tacoma Buddhist Temple in 2009 and later developed a community Taiko outreach and education program. Her years of dedicated work have made Taiko drumming accessible to communities across Tacoma.
Finally, the seventh and most recent film, “Lyle Quasim: Show Up, Suit Up, and Engage!” premiered on March 30th and tells the story of Lyle Quasim, one of Tacoma’s most enduring voices in civil rights activism. Born in Chicago but claiming Tacoma as his home and cause, Quasim transformed the city through decades of activism, holding leadership roles including the presidency of Bates Technical College, founding co-director of Safe Streets, and the first Black director of Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services. Following the premiere screening, the audience joined Quasim, co-directors Joanne Lisosky and Derek Nunn, Music Director Quintin Davis, and narrator Kwabi Amoah-Forson for a Q&A, offering a chance to reflect on the film and engage directly with the people behind it.
The CRPF’s ongoing mission is to advance civic harmony and historical awareness by celebrating Tacoma’s dynamic community of diverse legacies and interests. By giving audiences first-person access to each highlighted community’s accomplishments, the film series showcases Tacoma’s diversity and helps community members connect across cultural differences. The CRPF looks forward to continuing to spotlight Tacoma’s leaders in future films.