Spencer Nakasako   -----   Director, Producer

Spencer Nakasako won a National Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a Cambodian refugee teenager that aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.  Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary about a Iu Mien refugee teenage couple growing up too fast and too soon in Oakland, CA also aired on P.O.V.  Nakasako wrote the screenplay and co-directed a feature film about Hong Kong, Life is Cheap . . . But Toilet Paper is Expensive, with Wayne Wang, and was one of the producers on School Colors, a documentary for Frontline about the 1994 graduating class at Berkeley High School.  He produced and directed Monterey's Boat People, about the conflict between Vietnamese and local fishermen in his hometown of Monterey, CA, and Talking History, about the history of Asian women in the US.  Both films received numerous awards and aired nationally on PBS.  For the past fifteen years, Nakasako has been working in the Southeast Asian communities of San Francisco and Oakland, training at-risk refugee youth to make films about their own lives.  In addition to teaching film in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley, he has also had artist-in-residencies at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the University of Toronto and, most recently Stanford University.

 for more info please visit: http://www.refugeethemovie.com/