TT Takemoto

History

TT Takemoto is a queer Japanese American filmmaker and artist exploring Asian American history, sexuality, and identity. Their experimental films delve into hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and trauma that exist within Asian and Asian American archives. Takemoto interacts with found footage and archival materials through performance and labor-intensive processes of painting, lifting, and manipulating 16mm/35mm film emulsion using scotch tape, razor blades, and nail polish. By engaging with tactile and sensory dimensions of queer histories, Takemoto conjures up immersive fantasies involving butch surgeons, femme fish filleting, and homoerotic breadmaking. Their films honor queer Asian Americans who lived, loved, and labored together during the prewar era and beyond.

Movies

Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)
Ever Wanting (for Margaret Chung)
Director
Inspired by San Francisco's first Chinese American female physician, this film envisions the euphoria and despair of Margaret Chung and her insatiable desire for women and celebrity through her forays into drugs, sapphic surgeries, and queer flights of fancy.
On the Line
On the Line
Director
"On the Line" is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as "fish camp." Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male.
Semiotics of Sab
Semiotics of Sab
Director
"An oblique portrait of gay Japanese American actor Sab Shimono, whose work on stage and screen spans more than five decades. The grammatology of his career attests to conflicting lexicons of race, representation, and selfhood." (Tina Takemoto)
Sex, Politics and Sticky Rice
Sex, Politics and Sticky Rice
Director
Protests, potlucks, and three-ways are just the 'tip of the rice bowl' for five Asian American lesbians recounting their adventures in sex, love, and queer activism in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1980s.
Looking for Jiro
Looking for Jiro
Director
Jiro Onuma liked fine clothing and muscular men. How did this dandyish gay bachelor survive the isolation, humiliation and homophobia of the Japanese American Internment Camps during World War II? This musical mash-up video features drag king performance, U.S. propaganda footage, muscle building, and homoerotic bread making.
Sab Shimono: Acting “As If”
Sab Shimono: Acting “As If”
Director
On the eve of his eightieth birthday, acclaimed Japanese American actor Sab Shimono reflects on his lifelong commitment to the craft of acting, his struggles against racism and homophobia, and how his life was transformed by gay bars and marriage equality.
HK Uprising
HK Uprising
Director
A tribute to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong that are taking place three decades after the Tiananmen Square uprising.
Lift Little Tokyo
Lift Little Tokyo
Director
History and place. Maps and memories. (Taken from BFI Flare Film Festival 2019 guide). Dir. Tina Takemoto, 2018.
May 35
May 35
Editor
A haunting commemoration of the Tiananmen Square uprisings.
May 35
May 35
Director
A haunting commemoration of the Tiananmen Square uprisings.
Wayward Emulsions
Wayward Emulsions
Director
Oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from reels of 35mm film capture fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman.