Renee Tajima-Peña
| Renee Tajima-Peña | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1958 Chicago, Illinois, US |
| Residence | Los Angeles, California, US |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Occupation | Documentary filmmaker, Professor |
| Notable work | Who Killed Vincent Chin?; No Más Bebés; My America... or Honk If You Love Buddha |
Renee Tajima-Peña is an Academy Award-nominated American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, and Labor Women.
Tajima-Peña attended John Muir High School in Altadena, California, and later received her bachelor's degree cum laude from Harvard University's Radcliffe College where she majored in East Asian Studies and sociology. While at Harvard, she was chairperson of the United Front Against Apartheid.
Tajima-Peña has been deeply involved in the Asian American independent film community as an activist, writer and filmmaker. She was the first paid director at Asian Cine-Vision in New York and a founding member of the Center for Asian American Media (formerly National Asian American Telecommunications Association). She also founded the Asian American International Video Festival . She was a film critic for The Village Voice, a cultural commentator for National Public Radio, and the editor of Bridge: Asian American Perspectives.
Renee Tajima-Peña began filmmaking out of a desire for activism and political expression. Growing up in the 1970s, she was heavily influenced by the Asian American movement, the Civil Rights movement, and others. Tajima-Peña later turned her interest toward filming activism among young Asian American laborers. This turned into the project Labor Women.
In 2013, Tajima-Peña was appointed Professor of Asian American Studies and the Alumni and Friends of Japanese American Ancestry Endowed Chair at UCLA. She also directs the Center for EthnoCommunications at UCLA, housed in the Asian American Studies Center with a teaching component with the Asian American Studies Department. Tajima-Peña previously served as the Graduate Director of the Masters Program in Social Documentation as Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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