The Cineculture Club at California State University, Fresno and the Fresno Chapter of the Japanese American Citizen’s League will host the Central Valley premier of the Emmy award-winning documentary “From a Silk Cocoon” on March 16. Dr. Satsuki Ina, a former Fresno State faculty member who is the producer, co-director and writer of the documentary, will attend and speak at the event.

The premier will be held from 5:15 to 7 p.m. in the Leon S. and Pete P. Peters Educational Center located in the Student Recreation Center.

Ina taught courses in marriage and family counseling, with a specialization in multicultural counseling from 1981-86 while a professor in Fresno State’s Kremen School of Education. She taught at Sacramento State University and was granted emeritus status. A licensed psychotherapist specializing in cross-cultural counseling, she has conducted groups for Japanese Americans who, like herself, were children in the prison camps.

Ina was born in the Tule Lake Segregation Center during her parents’ four-year imprisonment in the WW II American Concentration Camps for Japanese Americans.

“From A Silk Cocoon” tells the story of the frightening and tragic outcome resulting from the wartime hysteria and racial profiling that occurred in the name of “military necessity,” according to the film’s Website.

“We are pleased to share a documentary that reveals the insidious trauma of war and the threat to individuals, citizens or immigrants, who have links to a country that is suddenly identified as the enemy,” said Dr. Katsuyo Howard, a staff member in Fresno State’s Department of International Student Services and Programs. “It is our hope that by sharing this story we will not only educate, but inspire and strengthen community commitment to live by our cherished democratic principles, especially in time of great social anxiety.”

The film is narrated by Oregon poet-laureate Lawson Inada, a native of Fresno who attended Fresno State. Inada is a third-generation Japanese American. In May of 1942, his family joined 120,000 other Japanese Americans in concentration camps where they were confined for the duration of World War II. He was first incarcerated at the Fresno Fairgrounds, then moved to a Concentration Camp in Arkansas and finally interned at a camp in Colorado at the end of the war.

He attended Fresno State before transferring to University of California, Berkeley in the 1950s.

The Cineculture Club promotes cultural awareness and discussion of diversity issues based on film screenings on campus. It also supports community organizations such as Fresno Filmworks, which screens experimental, foreign and independent films.

For more information contact Katsuyo Howard at 559.278.2028

For more information contained in this release, please go to the following Web site(s):

cineculture.csufresno.edu

www.fromasilkcocoon.com