Inspired by Toyama’s one-act play, Visas was based on the life of Chiune Sugihara who rescued an estimated 6,000 Jews from the Holocaust. The 1998 Oscar-winning short was shot in seven days in Los Angeles. Although Tashima wasn’t yet a DGA member, he said he knew he wanted a DGA team. “It was not difficult,” Tashima recalls. “We used a DGA Experimental Agreement contract which allows you to use union people. My UPM, 1st and 2nd ADs were all DGA members.”
Day of Independence also began as a Toyama one-act play, based on his father’s WWII experience. The film uses baseball as its window into the camps where 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Independence’s budget exceeded the requirements for an experimental contract so it was made via a DGA low budget contract and Tashima joined the Guild. Shot over six and a half days in Stockton and Los Angeles, it has since been selected to over 60 festivals and competitions worldwide garnering 25 awards.
Donahue says that they were able to hire DGA members for both films because they worked with the Guild from the very beginning. “We approached the DGA with both projects very early on. I think being up front about it is what made it successful.”
Having achieved a combination of critical, financial and audience success in the narrative shorts genre with their two films, Tashima, Toyama and Donahue say they are now working to produce a sequel to Day of Independence involving the 100442nd, a segregated Japanese unit during WWII.
