Every year for the last three years the Dr. David Chu Program has co-presented a film featured at the annual Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. This year, in keeping with its commitment to include the study of Asian North Americans in its concept of the Asia-Pacific, the Program co-presented the documentary film by Director Jim Choi, Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm. Director Fujitani moderated the post-screening Q & A with the audience and the main protagonists in the film, Mas and Marcy Masumoto. He also participated in the post-screening panel with members of the Toronto community at the Art Gallery of Ontario, “Food Talk: Mas & Marcy Masumoto.” Director Fujitani writes:

This could have been a beautiful film just on the theme of alternative farming and food, but what I admired most was its complex layering and interweaving of multiple issues. These include Japanese American internment, racism,  queer sexuality, mixed-race (or hapa) identities, bodily health and decline, the politics of water, intergenerational memories, trauma, religion, and of course organic farming and food. None of these themes monopolizes the entire film, but they all work together to produce a powerful and complex story of what it means to live, work, and treasure relationships under what are so often physically, politically and emotionally challenging circumstances. “You can taste the internment in my peaches,” Mas said at the panel, which gives us more than a little food for thought.

http://www.reelasian.com/festival-archives/changing-season-on-the-masumoto-family-farm/