From Potluck Pod: Saturday School - Season 9, Ep. 2: Hito Hata: Raise the Banner

Good Pop is taking a break this week as our hosts are out on official Professional Asian American business, so we're dropping in the latest episode from our fellow Potluck Podcast Saturday School, a podcast about Asian American film history hosted by journalist Ada Tseng (from our Bachelorette recaps), and film professor Brian Hu.If you like what you hear, make sure to follow and check out their other episodes at https://podcastpotluck.com/saturday-school---Episode 2 of our "Stars of Asian American Cinema" season goes back to the beginning with 1980's "Hito Hata: Raise the Banner," considered the first feature-length film made by and about Asian Americans. It was recently restored in 4K by the National Film Preservation Foundation. The film traces Japanese American history from the issei generation's arrival to the U.S., to incarceration during WWII, to their fight against gentrification in Little Tokyo in the '70s. "Hito Hata" stars Mako (an Oscar-nominated actor who was one of the founders of the Asian American theater company East West Players) and Pat Morita (who got famous from "Happy Days" and would later become Mr. Miyagi in "The Karate Kid"). The film was directed by Robert A. Nakamura and Duane Kubo, founders of Visual Communications, the organization behind the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival, and it symbolized an investment in Little Tokyo as a cultural hub for Asian America. For this generation, stardom wasn't just about fame or celebrity. It was about dignity. "Hito Hata" showed that a cast of Asian American actors who were usually limited to bit parts in Hollywood could be stars. It also used stardom to teach a history that wasn't taught in schools.