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Beating the Cheat
STEVEN OKAZAKI CUES HIS OWN TRUTH
Make it a rule - don't ever watch six Steven Okazaki films in a row. It started at around 9 am when I hunkered down and suddenly found myself on a journey led by stories of Japanese American survivors of internment camps; stereotypes of Asian men in America; big businesses displacing native Hawaii ans in their homeland; and weary heroin addicts in San Francisco.
These dense, often controversial, and opinionated films have come to define Okazaki's work and his Berkeley, California-based production company, Farallon Films. His documentaries are both inviting with their intimate portraits and distressing with their overwhelming sense of loss, paralysis, and sorrow.
As I enter Video Arts, the upscale post-production house in downtown San Francisco, a shock of cool air hits me before I am greeted by the serene focus and warm smile of Academy Award-winning director Steven Okazaki. Some weeks earlier, at the opening of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Steve Yamane, Okazaki's longtime employee, tells me it wasn't always about film for his boss. "He used to be a musician, you know," Yamane said, and with a smirk, tells me to ask him about it.
"I am a really mediocre musician," Okazaki answers, as we sit down for our interview. "I played in rock-and-roll bands from junior high until I was about twenty-seven, and then thought I should do something else-because I am not very good." As a teen Okazaki often strayed from the "in" crowd-while other bands played the Beatles, his covered the less mainstream Kinks.
Perhaps owing to his musical beginnings, Okazaki's films are filled with rich and sometimes overpowering soundtracks-as if the music is another character-in some instances interrupting the scene rather than pushing the story forward. These soundtracks regularly incorporate contemporary music with punk and rock roots. The melodic, leathery, and sultry voice of Chan Marshall, lead singer for Cat Power, is used in Black Tar Heroin (1999). This HBO documentary follows five poor and displaced young adults on a downward spiral of addiction. Cat Power is also featured on the soundtrack of Okazaki's new HBO film, Rehab, which tracks another group of drug addled youth, but this time as they struggle...