Ninety Minutes Later

Cyndy Fujikawa is best known for the feature length documentary film, OLD MAN RIVER, which she developed, wrote, produced and performed in.  OLD MAN RIVER (1999) took on the topic of the internment of Japanese Americans well before many sources of information on the subject were available, and thus became one of the earlier documentaries on the topic.  It concerned the life of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who was incarcerated at Manzanar with his then wife and children in 1942.  Jerry Fujikawa’s personal loses were unimaginable to Cyndy, who puts it all under a microscope in this autobiographical work, bridging together the pieces of a lesser known chapter of American history, with excerpts from Jerry Fujikawa’s acting career.  In a surprise ending, she locates a missing member of the family and is able to lead members of a lost generation to talk about their experiences (which she depicts in performance).  Fujikawa teamed with Emmy Award-winning director/editor Allan Holzman to adapt a play by the same name to film.  OLD MAN RIVER was considered a maverick film project at the time (shot digitally in 1997, and blown up to 16mm to qualify as a “film”) and debuted at Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, CA. Fujikawa and Holzman won Best Documentary Feature at Cinequest, beating out Rabbit in the Moon (a POV/PBS film on the same topic).  Fujikawa and Holzman went on to win three more awards at the Vermont International Film Festival, including Best in Justice and Human Rights, Heart of the Festival, and the People Choice award.  In 1999, OLD MAN RIVER won the prestigious American Cinema Editors’ award for Best Edited Documentary.

Fujikawa directed and produced a follow up piece to OLD MAN RIVER called DAY OF REMEMBRANCE which depicted various events in Japanese American communities in 2003, calling for vigilance and activism, as Arab and Muslim Americans were being registered, incarcerated, or were just disappearing as a result of the War on Terror.  DAY OF REMEMBRANCE won the Human Rights award in the 9th Annual Medial That Matters Film Festival in New York City.

Fujikawa has extensive production and finance experience over the past 30 years in television and feature films.  She holds an MFA in Theatre Arts from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.  Her film and theatre work have been exhibited around the US, Canada and Japan.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Plaza Community Services, the oldest non profit organization in Los Angeles, providing family services to communities such as Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles for over a century.