Yamashita (film)

Short animated film by Hayley Foster that tells the incarceration story from the perspective of a girl of about eight: her removal from home with her parents and grandfather, the hardships they face at Manzanar (meals in communal mess halls, the barbed wire fences, and saying the pledge of allegiance in a barrack classroom), and her embrace of Japanese culture that her mother discourages, but that her beloved grandfather supports. The hand drawn animation is mostly in black-and-white, with strategic bursts of color.

Yamashita was Foster's senior thesis film at Loyola Marymount University, where she graduated with a B.A. in animation in 2013. Of Norwegian and German ancestry, Foster was inspired by The Lion King , the films of Hayao Miyazaki and had studied abroad in Kyoto and Osaka. She also drew on the famous Dorothea Lange photograph of the young Japanese American girl waiting to be taken to a concentration camp while wearing a peacoat that had been tagged. The film won a bronze medal at the Student Academy Awards and LMU's Walter Lantz Foundation prize. Upon graduation, she was hired as a storyboard artist at Warner Brothers, where she worked on the new Scooby Doo show. She subsequently worked on The Owl House and DuckTales at Disney Studios. ^[1]

Might also like An American Contradiction 2012; Half Kenneth (2008); A Crossroad Called Manzanar (2010)