Last summer, we had the fortune of having Jasmine Lee Ehrhardt as a Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies intern. Lee Ehrhardt is studying Film and Digital Media (Critical Studies) and Literature (World Literature & Cultural Studies) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Lee reflects on interning at CAAM:
“I was fortunate enough to be an intern for #MemoriestoLight last summer and I even wrote about one of their projects for an essay on Asian American media and the personal narrative. My time spent at CAAM and with Memories to Light was kick-ass and showed me just how important our stories are in larger Asian American histories.”
In Lee Ehrhardt’s essay, where she analyzes Deann Borshay Liem’s First Person Plural, Mark Decena’s The War Inside, and CAAM’s Memories to Light project, she writes: “The image of an Asian American family, of Asian Americans existing as carefree children, teenage athletes, young adults on vacation, becomes accessible and easily understood. Because of the organic, unscripted nature of home movies and their ability to capture everyday moments or important occasions in that Asian American family, the widespread distribution of these films allows these images and their personal stories to be normalized.”
One of Lee Ehrhardt’s projects while at CAAM was interviewing and editing home movie footage from the Tachibana family collection, including this video below. “I really enjoyed editing the Tachibana footage and getting to know their story. It was particularly cool getting to rewatch the footage with Gavin Tachibana, who shared the footage with CAAM, and talk about his childhood and the many memories that his home movies brought up for him,” she tells us.
“I think the most memorable part of interning at CAAM was being in a space – literally and figuratively – that was specifically dedicated to working with and for Asian Americans in media. Being able to contribute to a project that I really care about, and working alongside people with a similar drive, was really wonderful and inspiring/validating for me,” Lee Ehrhardt adds.
Thank you to our supporters and partners who have supported and shared the campaign so far. Thanks to you, we’ve raised $2,766. If you haven’t yet donated, please consider donating $10 or more to CAAM’s crowdfunding campaign Memories to Light at caamedia.org/SupportMtL by August 14th. Together, we can ensure that the stories of diverse Asian American families and communities from all 50 states are preserved and shared.
