June 17--Chicago filmmaker Eugene Sun Park has been awarded a nearly $160,000 grant to make a short narrative film about a "key moment of the Japanese-American incarceration experience" during World War II.
Titled "The Orange Story," plans are to shoot the 20-minute film in Chicago as well as California. Park is producing the project with his company Full Spectrum Features.
In the wake of the 1942 executive order that forced Japanese-Americans out of their homes and into internment camps, the film centers on the story of one man, Koji Oshima, the owner of a corner grocery in San Fransisco who "must now abandon everything."
The grant comes via the National Park Service, which allocates funding for projects commemorating and preserving Japanese American confinement sites.
"In 2006, Congress allocated $38 million for projects," according to Park. "They chose NPS to administer this grant program because many of the former internment camp sites are on federal land."
For more information about the movie go here.
nmetz@tribpub.com
