Spencer Nakasako Movies
- 2003
Spencer Nakasako directs the documentary Refugee. Mike is a twentysomething college student who grew up as a refugee, raised in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. During the 1979 Vietnam invasion of Cambodia, he and his mother fled to the United States. He has decided to return to Cambodia to meet his long-lost father and brother. He learns that his father has remarried and his brother has been raised by a different family member. Refugee was broadcast on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- 1998
For this video-dairy documentary, director Spencer Nakasako loaned cameras to Laotian-born Californians Kelly Saeteurn and Tony Saelio, a couple engaged to marry. Seventh-grade dropout Tony, two years after serving time for armed assault, works as a shuttle-bus driver, but possible INS deportation looms. Meanwhile, pregnant 17-year-old Kelly graduates from high school and begins planning for college and a career. After baby Andrew is born, they follow the Iu Mien custom in which the wife moves in with her in-laws. Frustrated when his parents do not move ahead with the marriage plans, Kelly then learns she's pregnant again. With a video-to-16mm transfer, this film was shown at the 1998 San Francisco Asian-American Film Festival. Nakasako's process here is similar to that employed on his Emmy-winning A.K.A. Don Bonus (1997). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- 1995
This gritty documentary chronicles the daily life of an 18-year old Cambodian immigrant living in San Francisco. It is literally a filmed diary for Sokly (Don Bonus) Ny who spent 12 months making the film as part of a homework assignment for a filmmaking class taught by director Spencer Nakasako. During the first few months of filming, Ny is seen living in a run-down, dangerous housing project. His mother lives with her new lover in another part of town, and father is living in Cambodia. Ny and his other Asian neighbors are frequently terrorized by the criminal activities in their neighborhood. He worries that his older brother is involved with gangs. But though the reality of his life there is grim, Ny hopes that with hard work, he can have a "normal" American life. At the film's end, he chronicles a lively graduation dance party and the joy his family feels when they learn that they are to be given a larger, safer apartment by a government program. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1991
Asian-American filmmaker Wayne Wang returns to the city of his birth for this surreal, violent, and darkly comic look at the seamy underside of life in Hong Kong. A young man of Chinese/Japanese heritage (Spencer Nakasako) working at a racetrack in San Francisco is hired by gangsters to deliver a briefcase to the Big Boss (Lo Wai), a notorious leader of Hong Kong's organized crime syndicate. Dressed in western clothes and proclaiming himself "The Man with No Name," the courier arrives in Hong Kong with the briefcase chained to his wrist, but this doesn't stop a group of enterprising young hoodlums from stealing it from him. As he searches for his precious cargo, the man tries desperately to rendezvous with the Big Boss, only to hear a dizzying variety of excuses from his second-in-command (Lam Chung) as to why the Boss can't or won't see him. The courier also has to deal with his elderly Uncle Cheng (Cheng Kwan Ming), who would rather show off his latest dance routines than help his nephew save his own neck. The man also witnesses all sorts of bizarre and bewildering behavior, from a restaurant that serves feces to a prostitute who announces she doesn't mind being abused, though she's tired of not being paid for it. Directed by Wayne Wang in collaboration with actor Spencer Nakasako, Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper Is Expensive was released by Wang with a self-imposed "A" rating (for "Adult") after being threatened with an "X" by the MPAA ratings board; the film contains no explicit sex, but the MPAA was troubled by the film's gangland violence and pervasive bad taste. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Spencer Nakasako, Cora Miao, (more)
