In 1945 Chicago, Vince Tajiri, an unemployed Nikkei photographer stumbles into a kind of bardo between past, present, and future, where he encounters Paul Robeson, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Sun Ra—three fellow refugees from lost worlds destroyed by war who have turned to art to dream passage into alternative futures.
SYNOPSIS
In 1945, unemployed Nikkei photographer Vince Tajiri wanders the streets of Chicago, searching for community through the viewfinder of his camera. At the beach, he stumbles into a bardo outside time; he encounters Paul Robeson, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Sun Ra, fellow artists dreaming passage into alternative futures, as well as his three children, apparitions from worlds yet-to-be. Using an Asian fortune-telling ritual for infants, the children present Vince with a choice of three objects—which cast him backwards and forwards in time, into the lost worlds of his prewar youth as a journalist and boxer, and to the improbable life of notoriety he will experience as the founding photo editor of Playboy.
Director Statement
Non-Alien, my current hybrid-documentary feature in development is a speculative biography which incorporates historical research, archival photography and dance. It originated from a recently re-discovered photobook created by my father Vince Tajiri, that contains images he shot documenting the Japanese American Resettlement in Chicago. The film will incorporate set pieces working with actors who perform choreographed movement based around vernacular gestures including, Japanese festival processions, chick-sexing, office labor, Taiko drumming, cooking and more. The film I am creating, explores this under-historicized period when Japanese Americans were compelled to resettle a second time after camp by the War Relocation Authority to cities outside of California in order to assimilate them. I approach my non-fiction storytelling through a poetic visual language structured around persistent, haunting questions in response to historic research. This project came about through conversations I had with my nephew, the scholar Vince Schleitwiler when we discovered my father’s unpublished photography book. Schleitwiler is an American Ethnic studies scholar who writes on the Resettlement of Japanese Americans in Chicago. Coupled with the discovery of my father’s notes for autobiographical short stories, and a memoir of his career as the Photography Editor for Playboy Magazine, we became interested in creating a speculative, hybrid-documentary, based off of memories sparked by the recovered text versus the bedtime stories he shared with me based off of his hardships. We also include other artists that Vince was inspired by, including Paul Robeson, Sun Ra and Hisaye Yamamoto.
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Rea Tajiri
Rea Tajiri is an award-winning documentary director and producer, currently living in Philadelphia. Her work situates itself in poetic, non-traditional storytelling forms to encourage dialog and reflection around buried histories. For more than three decades, her films have influenced a generation of filmmakers and artists and have been included in Asian American studies, documentary studies and women’s and gender studies curricula across the US. Tajiri has been recognized with a Chicken and Egg Award in 2023, a NorthStar Fellowship at the Camden International Film Festival in 2024, and both a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and a USA Artists Fellowship in 2025. In 2026, she was invited to join the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She is currently in pre-production on a hybrid documentary feature NON-ALIEN. Tajiri has directed three documentary features including WISDOM GONE WILD (2022), LORDVILLE (2014), and PASSION FOR JUSTICE: YURI KOCHIYAMA (1993) – as well as several short films. WISDOM GONE WILD had a national broadcast on the PBS docu series POV, Season 36; it screened at the DOC NYC Film Festival and in International Competition at IDFA. To date, the film has won seven awards; including the Audience Award and Honorable Mention Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at Blackstar Film Festival, as well as the Grand Prix at the San Diego Asian American Film Festival in 2022. Her film LORDVILLE, screened in competition both at CAAMfest and VC Fest in 2014.
Angela Park is a Korean American producer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Park is an alumna and mentor of the Armed with the Camera Fellowship, through Visual Communications. She co-produced LIQUOR STORE DREAMS, a documentary feature, which premiered at Tribeca and screened at BFI London Film Festival, Palm Springs International, and Busan International Film Festival. The film broadcasted on the PBS program, POV. Her latest producing project, PAPER MARRIAGE is a feature narrative film for Duplass Brothers Productions. PAPER MARRIAGE premiered at VC Film Fest in where it won the Community Award and has sold out screenings in festivals across the U.S.
Christina Ree (C. Ree) is a visual artist, writer, film programmer, and plant addict based in California. She always says YES to creative conspiracies, including producing for LA Rebellion filmmaker Zeinabu irene Davis (Pandemic Bread) and for filmmaking duo Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (Twin Snakes) who were named in Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film." She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco, Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions (LACE), the A.I.R. Biennial curated by Eriola Pira, and the Art Journal Open. Her collaborative work has been written about in multiple publications including Radical Futurisms by TJ Demos, (Sternberg Press, 2023) and Dis...Miss (MIT Press, 2023). Her notable authored writings include "A Glossary of Haunting" (2013) with Eve Tuck and "Before Dispossession, or Surviving It” (2016) with Angie Morrill, Eve Tuck, and Super Futures Haunt Qollective - an artist collaborative Ree helped co-found. She is currently the Deputy Artistic Director at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, one of the largest and longest running showcases of Asian and Asian American film in North America.
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