... I Told You So (film)

Early documentary film produced by the Asian American arts organization Visual Communications that profiles the Sansei poet Lawson Fusao Inada . Shot in black and white, the film follows Inada through the streets of Fresno where he recites poetry from his 1971 book Before the War: poems as they happened over music by June and Dan Kuramoto, visiting friends and the family fish market. Later, he is shown working with other Asian American writers/editors on a new literary anthology (that will be published as Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers ), at work teaching at Southern Oregon University and walking among the ruins at the Tule Lake site. Between the poetry, Inada talks about his upbringing in Fresno where he related more to Chicano and African American classmates than to Japanese Americans, his family background, and the impact of wartime incarceration. No director, producer or writer is listed in the film's credits, but Alan Kondo is credited as the director on the Visual Communications website and other sources. The title comes from one of Inada's poems.

Twenty-seven years later, Michael Markee and Vincent Wixon produced a second documentary on Inada, Lawson Fusao Inada: What It Means to Be Free , that also includes a visit to Tule Lake. Poet Amy Uyematsu was inspired to write the poem "Dear Lawson" (published in her 2001 anthology That Blue Trickster Time ) after viewing ... I Told You So .

Might also like Lawson Fusao Inada: What It Means to Be Free (2001); A Song for Ourselves (2009); Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm (2015)