On February 19TH 1942, FDR signed Executive Order 9066 sending more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps during World War II. To commemorate the Day of Remembrance on that day, Portland’s Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) will host a screening of No No Girl. The tells a generational, Japanese American story intersecting ideas of identity, family, duty and the traumas of war and relocation. The executive order given 81 years ago still impacts survivors and descendants. One young daughter will take it upon herself to shine a light on their past and uncover the mysteries that have been haunting their family

Dmae Lo Roberts talked Paul Daisuke Goodman the director/writer of No No Girl about his journey as a biracial Japanese American to create his second feature film at the age of 31 while still battling two cancer diagnoses. Goodman also talks about traveling around the country to screen this film.

Actor Chris Tashima, an Oscar-winning director himself, also describes the importance of this film created by and from a Yonsei (4th generation) experience and the impact of working with Goodman.

Both Goodman and Tashima and actor Mika Dyo. will be in Portland for a talkback following the screening. The film is currently screening around the country.

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The Portland chapter of JACL will host a screening of No-No Girl followed by an interview with the director and artists.
February 19, 2023 at 1:30 pm
Lincoln Recital Hall at PSU
The event is free and open to the public.
More info at: https://www.pdxjacl.org/

Paul Daisuke Goodman is a filmmaker and two time cancer survivor. He began his career as a camera operator on the high seas for Discovery’s Whale Wars until his first cancer diagnosis at age 25. For the next six years he would undergo treatments for his Leukemia that would achieve remission and then relapse and remission again. During that time, Goodman began writing and editing from his hospital room and would shoot films in his months as an outpatient. Eventually, and to the occasional frustration of his doctors, he was able to make his first feature film, Evergreen. They would shoot on the road for 28 days and on the 30th, he was back in the hospital for more chemotherapy. Late in 2020 and at the height of the pandemic, his Leukemia would relapse. This time spreading to his spinal cord and brain. The initial outlook was bleak but after the first rounds of chemotherapy, it showed the cancer responding to the treatment and set him on a road towards bone marrow transplant and recovery. During this time, Goodman would write his second feature film, No No Girl, and through chemo, radiation and the transplant he would find another remission and shoot the film six months after being discharged from the hospital. Today, Paul lives in Los Angeles with his fiancee and manages his own production company, Eight East Productions, named for the wing of the hospital where he made his first films.

Chris Tashima is an actor and director based in Los Angeles who has been working in theatre and film for nearly 40 years. He won an Academy Award® in 1998 for the dramatic short film, Visas and Virtue, inspired by the heroic actions of Holocaust rescuer Chiune Sugihara. Chris co-wrote and directed the film, and starred as the Japanese diplomat who issued transit visas allowing 6,000 Jews to escape Nazi Europe at the onset of World War II. Chris has portrayed a number of Japanese American roles in independent films including Under the Blood Red Sun, adapted from the Graham Salisbury young adult novel, and Go For Broke – An Origin Story, from producer/screenwriter Stacey Hayashi.

Actor Mika Dyo in “No No Girl.”