UCLA Center for EthnoCommunications

Linking Media, Cultures & Technology across Communities

EthnoCommunications is “living media”—the self-documentation and preservation
of our histories and cultures in real time and virtual space.

Robert Nakamura
Director and Professor, EthnoCommunications

EthnoCommunications was founded in 1996 as a national institution under the auspices of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center to utilize media and communications technologies to document, preserve, and highlight ethnic cultures and societies.

Campus to Community Training

EthnoCommunications Academic Program was established as part of the Asian American Studies curriculum in 1996. Currently, between twenty to twenty-five students, primarily Asian American Studies majors, receive community media theory and technical training in a three-quarter program each year. Additionally, a significant number of graduate students through the EthnoCommunications Program are incorporating community-based media research, methodology, and digital video production into their thesis projects.

Future plans for the Program include implementing and instituting an EthnoCommunications minor to be offered by the Asian American Studies Department, as well as the development of a comprehensive graduate program and M.A. specialization.

Courses taught in the EthnoCommunications series include:

• EthnoCommunications I: Documenting Multiethnic Communities
• EthnoCommunications II: Video Ethnography and Documentary Workshop
• EthnoCommunications III: Advanced Video Ethnography and Documentary Workshop

EthnoCommunications’ student productions are currently in use in the classroom and have been featured in many community, academic, and film festival events.

Creating Community Media Partners

In 2002, the Center for EthnoCommunications entered into a partnership with the Little Tokyo Service Center to establish the Downtown Community Media Center (DCMC) at the site of the proposed Little Tokyo Recreation Center and to develop a comprehensive community-based media documentation and training program. This marks the beginning of a permanent and far-reaching “campus to community” program that is Phase II of EthnoCommunications’ long-range plan to create media service/learning bridges into our local communities of color, directly serving these communities through emerging media technology.

During 2003-2004, the Downtown Community Media Center moved into administrative offices at the Little Tokyo Service Center. Currently, the DCMC is undertaking two major media projects: a documentary on the early Asian American Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and a comprehensive visual life history project of long-time residents in the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles.

Educational Programming

In addition to training students, teaching, and film festivals, EthnoCommunications documented the following events for the Asian American Studies Center and Asian American community organizations in Los Angeles: the Teamsters Conference on Cross-Border Organizing, Pilipino Cultural Night, March 5th Student Walkout Against the War in 2003, Senshin Buddhist Temple, and California Fund for Youth Organizing.

Eye to Eye: Asian American Artists

EthnoCommunications, along with the Japanese American Museum, also produced the Eye to Eye: Asian American Artists Series, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The series includes Video Life Histories and Resource Guides of thirteen Asian American visual, theatrical, and multimedia artists including: Albert Saijo, Allan deSouza, Amy Hill, Tony Osumi, Vi Ly, Yong Soon Min, Frank Chin, Long Nguyen, Momo Nagano, Nobuko Miyamoto, Phil Yeh, Russell Leong, Dom Magwili and Sachiko.

Once Upon a Camp

A series of multilingual educational videos in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese about the American Japanese concentration camps of WWII. The production was funded by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and was in partnership with the Alhambra School District and Japanese American National Museum.

International Media Linkages

EthnoCommunications collaborated with the Documentary Film School at Tainan National College of the Arts in Taiwan in 2004 for the first transpacific forum on Community Media and EthnoCommunications. Fifteen EthnoCommunications student films were screened, together with documentaries by Taiwan’s independent filmmakers.