In memoriam: Bob Nakamura, 89, pioneering filmmaker and Center for EthnoCommunications founder

Robert "Bob" Nakamura, professor of film and Asian American studies, died June 10, 2025. He was 89.

Regarded as the "godfather of Asian American media," Nakamura could be found earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival celebrating the release of "Third Act," by his son Tadashi, a UCLA alumnus. The documentary turns the camera on the acclaimed filmmaker and photographer, delving into art, activism, grief and fatherhood as it chronicles Bob Nakamura's life and career, including his Parkinson's disease diagnosis.

"I hope everyone can see that production and gain the same respect and admiration for this generous and gifted artist, friend and changemaker," said Karen Umemoto, a professor and director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

The film is showing at Laemmle's Monica Film Theater in Santa Monica through Oct. 2 and will continue its festival run in Santa Cruz, Silicon Valley and Honolulu.

Born in Venice, California, and raised in Atwater, Nakamura attended the Art Center College of Design and worked as a photographer for designer Charles Eames and publications such as "Life" before attending UCLA in the 1970s.

The M.F.A. candidate was involved in the film school's Ethno-Communications program, which addressed the lack of diversity in filmmaking and inspired students to use film for social change. The program is the subject of an upcoming film series Oct. 17-18 at the Billy Wilder Theatre at the Hammer Museum at UCLA.

In 1987, Nakamura returned to campus, where he spent 33 years teaching as a professor of film and later, of Asian American studies. He also served as UCLA's Japanese American Alumni Professor of Japanese American Studies from 1999 until his retirement in 2012.

During his tenure, he founded the Center for EthnoCommunications, inspired by the program that fostered his early years as a filmmaker, to help document and promote diverse ethnic experiences. The center inspired other universities to start similar programs.

"When I was asked to launch the social documentary grad program at UCSC, I had one model: the EthnoCommunications program that Bob established at UCLA, which merges academic research and inquiry with creative documentary practice," said UCLA professor Renee Tajima-Pena, who now runs the program and wrote about Nakamura after his death. "Bob was a visionary and an institution builder as well as a filmmaking pioneer."

Beyond academia, Nakamura was a dedicated champion of Asian American media and community. In 1970, he founded Visual Communications with other UCLA alums. Based in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo, the organization is now the oldest community-based media arts center in the country. He also co-founded the media arts center at the Japanese American National Museum alongside Karen Ishizuka, his partner and constant collaborator, and served as executive producer for a children's educational series about the Japanese American incarceration camps.

Nakamura's legacy lives on through his groundbreaking work. His thesis film, "Manzanar," one of the earliest media depictions of the U.S. government's incarceration of Japanese Americans, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011 and the National Film Registry in 2022. Like his other productions, "Looking Like the Enemy" and "Wataridori: Birds of Passage," it was inspired by his own childhood spent inside a concentration camp. "Hito Hata: Raise the Banner," the first feature-length film made by and about Asian Pacific Americans, is thought to have helped launch the Asian American independent film movement in the early 1980s.

Throughout his life, Nakamura won more than 30 awards for filmmaking, visual art and leadership.