I WAS BORN, BUT...

San Francisco Premiere

USA 2004 | 90mins | 16mm Color

In person: Director Roddy Bogawa

Prompted by the death of punk icon Joey Ramone in 2001, filmmaker Roddy Bogawa began a reflection on punk music and its impact on him as an artist. The result is I WAS BORN, BUT..., a sumptuously photographed, minimalist documentary which expands the portrait of a Japanese American punk rocker into a story of race, assimilation and cultural memory. Bogawa traverses personal and political history, from his formative years in Los Angeles to his life today in New York, from his parents' memories of Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor bombing to his own of New York on September 11, 2001. Amidst reflections and travels, he visits now-shuttered Los Angeles punk clubs, films his father driving golf balls over and over again, and recalls the restaurant worker who, after finally allowing Bogawa to film him, splatters pig blood on him instead. Two strands run throughout the film, bridging Bogawa's cultural and musical history and providing the film's marvelous soundtrack: his growing friendship with former Clash frontman Joe Strummer, and concert footage of the acclaimed band Seam, who, led by three Korean Americans, helped define the underground music landscape of the '90s. Appropriating the name of Yasujiro Ozu's 1932 silent masterpiece, Bogawa has mined the Ozu tropes of generational change, family and memory, albeit in a very different time period and setting, to create a masterpiece all his own.

—Chi-hui Yang