Wisdom Gone Wild

REA TAJIRI is a filmmaker and visual artist who earned her BFA and MFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts in post-studio art. In 2021, Tajiri was awarded the The Leeway Transformation Award and an Independence Media Fund grant for her filmmaking. Her debut feature Strawberry Fields, and groundbreaking short History and Memory, will be featured on the Criterion Channel in May 2022 as part of Sentient Art Films program: My Sight is Lined with Visions. Wisdom Gone Wild, Tajiri's latest documentary feature, received funding through the ITVS Diversity Development Fund, Center for Asian American Media, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. The film presents a new look at dementia and caregiving; rather than a portrait of loss, dementia is seen as a wisdom that has “gone wild.”
Tajiri was one of six artists commissioned to create a public art piece for the 25th Anniversary Project of the Asian Arts Initiative funded by a Pew Projects Grant. The exhibition was entitled (ex)Change: Place, History, Presence. Tajiri’s piece, Wataridori: Birds of Passage, linked four sites in West Philadelphia to the Philadelphia Hostel, a temporary home for Japanese Americans who were resettled by the U.S. Government after being incarcerated in U.S. Concentration Camps during World War II.

Tajiri has given Master Classes on documentary filmmaking at Claremont College, UC Irvine Graduate Seminar, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Colorado, Boulder and Scribe Video Center, Philadelphia. She has taught classes in Hybrid-Narrative, Documentary Production, Dramatic-Short Narrative Filmmaking and Editing Strategies at Temple University where she is an Associate Professor in Film Media Arts.

In 2014, Tajiri completed a feature-length documentary, Lordville, which premiered at CAAMFest 2014 at the Pacific Film Archives and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the VC Fest 2014. In this new work, Tajiri explores the ways in which landscape, memory and history reverberate in a small New York town on the Delaware River. In 2012, Tajiri was invited to present Lordville as a work-in-progress at Smith College’s Women and Social Justice Documentary Symposium with co- panelists with Su Friedrich and Barbara Hammer. Lordville was reviewed in Hyperallergic https://hyperallergic.com/451443/after-life-what-remains-alice-gallery/

Tajiri’s debut feature film Strawberry Fields received funding from ITVS Open Call and had its European premiere at the 54th Venice Film Festival (La Biennale di Venezia).

Strawberry Fields won the Grand Prix at the Fukuoka Film Festival in Japan. The film has screened in 20 other festivals including the Seattle International Film Festival, the
L.A. Independent Film Festival, and the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It was invited to screen at the Rotterdam Market, as a work-in-progress through the IFP No Borders program. Strawberry Fields was produced by Joana Vicente and Jason Kliot of Open City Films.

Tajiri’s earlier works include History and Memory, which premiered at the Whitney Biennial and went on to receive the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association; a Special Jury Award: New Genres from the San Francisco International Film Festival; and Best Experimental Film from the Atlanta Film Festival. It also screened at the Yamagata International Documentary Festival, the Hawaii International Film Festival. The film was licensed for the Washington State K-12 educational curriculum.

Tajiri is a co-director and producer of a film on the life of Harlem human-rights activist Yuri Kochiyama entitled: Passion for Justice, which premiered at the Asia Society in New York and screened on Free Speech TV. Passion for Justice was screened in four commemorations of the life of Yuri Kochiayma in 2014-2015 and part of the centennial screenings for Yuri and MalcolmX’s birthdays in 2021 that took place across the country.

Tajiri’s video art work has been included in the 1989, 1991, and 1993 Whitney Biennial and other venues including the Viper Video Festival, the Human Rights Watch Festival, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. Tajiri is a two- time recipient of the Rockefeller Media Fellowship, two NEA Visual Arts Fellowships and two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, as well as numerous grants from the New York State Council for the Arts. She has been awarded artist residencies from Banff, Fogo Island Arts, the MacDowell Colony and Smack Mellon.

Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Film Media Arts Department at Temple University where she teaches documentary production.