Opening Night
Friday October 17, 2025
6:00 PM - 9:15 PM
OPENING NIGHT
Includes bento dinner and t-shirt
THIRD ACT is a deep dive into the life and work of pioneering photographer and filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura, made by his son, Tadashi Nakamura. On its surface, the documentary is a biopic that explores the elder filmmaker's public role as "the Godfather of Asian American film,” including one of the pioneering works exploring the Japanese American internment camps in WW2. But with his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, the film's undercurrent poses a question that’s at once personal and universal: how can a father and son say goodbye?
Third Act
Q&A Guest and Moderator
Director: Tadashi Nakamura
Emmy-winning filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura was named one of CNN’s “Young People Who Rock” for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and listed as one of the “Top Rising Asian American Directors” on IMDb. The fourth-generation Japanese American recently completed Mele Murals, a documentary on the transformative power of modern graffiti art and ancient Hawaiian culture for a new generation of Native Hawaiians. Mele Murals was broadcasted on PBS and Al Jazeera, and was nominated for an Emmy in 2018. His previous film Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings was broadcasted nationally on PBS and went on to win the 2013 Gotham Independent Film Audience Award, which was in competition with 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station.
Nakamura’s trilogy of documentary films on the Japanese American experience, Yellow Brotherhood (2003), Pilgrimage (2007) and A Song for Ourselves (2009) have garnered over 20 awards. Nakamura has a M.A. in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz, a B.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.
Moderator: Janelle Wang
Janelle Wang is an anchor for NBC Bay Area News, co-anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast alongside Jessica Aguirre and the 5:30 p.m. newscast with Raj Mathai. She also reports for the station’s 6 p.m. newscast.
Since joining NBC Bay Area, Wang has earned three Emmy Awards for her coverage of the Valley Fire in Middletown, the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland and the North Bay wildfires in Wine Country. Her reporting has taken her around the globe, including to Sochi, Russia, for the Winter Olympics and to Kansas City for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory.
Prior to NBC Bay Area, Wang spent more than eight years at KGO-TV ABC7 in San Francisco, where she covered a wide range of stories, from the deadly San Bruno gas explosion to the steroid scandal in professional sports. She also reported extensively on the Scott Peterson murder trial, with her courtroom notes reaching readers as far as South America and Europe.