How the Asian Americans PBS series came about, and its key players

03/26/2020

By Momo Chang

The Asian American series on PBS has been many years in the making. As with many large-scale documentary series, the idea was first conceptualized well before there was any funding secured. But, the project had viability from the beginning, with a strong and experienced production team, as well as passionate storytellers and creatives alongside to execute their vision for the five-part documentary series, which airs on PBS May 11 and 12, 2020.

Asian Americans is the most ambitious series about Asian Americans ever, examining the fastest-growing racial, ethnic, and immigrant group in the United States. Asian Americans takes a dive into the group’s history and the role Asian Americans have played in shaping U.S. history, told from an Asian American perspective.

It was at an annual PBS Annual Meeting in 2012 where Jeff Bieber, national production executive at PBS flagship station WETA in Washington, D.C., first contacted Center for Asian American Media’s Stephen Gong and Don Young and broached the idea of a historical series focused on Asian Americans. Bieber wanted to partner with CAAM on this project.

“We were thrilled,” said Don Young, CAAM’s Director of Programs. “We knew Jeff had real capacity, eagerness, and experience.” Bieber had developed and produced several successful comprehensive historical PBS series on different ethnic communities: Jewish Americans, Latino Americans, and Italian Americans, among other projects.

“This series tees up history that long should have been attainable in the public sphere,” Bieber said. “To see how people from different countries and speaking different languages eventually coalesce and form an American identity that have common bonds is quite fascinating.”

WETA and CAAM created comprehensive proposals and began approaching major funders for the project. Young credits Bieber with having the rare experience of fundraising for a project of this scope. Together, they raised $6 million for production, marketing, and educational curriculum development. Bieber, as a producer in the flagship PBS station, had the clout and expertise to push the project along within the PBS system. The intent of the series was always to serve as a reflection for Asian Americans, as well as connecting and bridging with the larger American public.

“As always in our narratives it’s two-fold: We want the Asian American community to feel more empowered and more engaged in American citizenship, and knowing this history is important for these new generations,” said CAAM Executive Director Stephen Gong. “On the other hand, clearly we believe the general public also will find great meaning in understanding our histories, the histories of our different communities.”

The team brought on as the series producer documentary filmmaker Tajima-Peña, a Professor of Asian American Studies who teaches documentary film and Director of the Center for Ethnocommunications at UCLA. Among the episode producers are acclaimed Asian American documentary filmmakers Grace Lee, S. Leo Chiang, and Geeta Ghandabir. The rest of the production team is also primarily Asian American, from Los Angeles-based post-production house Flash Cuts, run by Eurie Chung and former CAAM Board member Walt Louie, to Creative Executive Producer Jean Tsien, and production assistants and others on the creative team. A team of humanities advisors was also brought on. (Bieber had previously worked with Tajima-Peña on her film, My Journey Home, for which Bieber was Executive Producer).

“It was Renee as series producer who developed the concept, really deeply emerged herself in the history, some of which she already knew, but she really dug in much deeper,” Young said. “CAAM and WETA were supportive but also really tried to push forward, to challenge Renee and the team to tell the best story, to really make it as relevant and engaging and urgent as possible.” 

The result is a fresh look at key moments in Asian American history, told not through a top-down approach, but through centering peoples’ stories. Many of the subjects witnessed first-hand significant historical moments in Asian American and U.S. history. “We populated the screen with people who had personal and emotional ties to the story in addition to scholars,” Tajima-Peña said. “We have people who are descendants of history, or people who are eyewitnesses, or the creators of history.” 

She gives the examples of Helen Zia, who was central to the campaign for justice for Vincent Chin. Zia’s father was also under investigation by the FBI in the midst of their search for  Communist “subversives.” Pulitzer-prize winning author and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen shares more personal stories about his family coming to the U.S. as refugees after the war in Vietnam.

“The fact that this was made is a feat itself,” Tajima-Peña reflects. Asian Americans is not the first attempt at making a series focusing on Asian American series. Tajima-Peña herself had written a treatment in the 80s focusing on this topic with a NAATA grant. Another project by SF Bay Area PBS station KQED, never got off the ground. 

Ancestors in America, directed by the late Loni Ding, whom Young and many others worked with on the series, is also an early example of a series that ambitiously tried to tell Asian American history.

But it took this long for a series to be completed. The broadcast premiere on May 11, 2020, means that the history will be even more significant, given that it is a presidential election year. 
“It’s remarkable that it’s going to be broadcast in the Spring of 2020 with so much on the line,” Gong noted. “One of the main things we really learned, early on, is you really want to assert, this isn’t Asian American history, it’s American history—that’s one of the tenets—and to foster deeper understanding of the role Asian Americans played in the country.”

One of the challenges of producing this series is that it could have been many, many more hours long.

“We knew from the very beginning that it’s not going to be a definitive survey type of series,” Tajima-Peña said. “Right now, there are so many Asian nationalities in the U.S., maybe 50-60 or more. It’s so diverse and there’s no way to cover all the groups. We look at it as a beginning, and definitely not the end.”

Gong sees the series as the “bigger picture” of Asian America, and all reflected that they hope the series inspires people to watch previous documentaries about various communities and history, as well as to delve into history books. 

The producers note that another highlight of producing the series is bring so many filmmakers, subjects, authors, and scholars together for the project. “We have an amazing amount of creative talent on the series who’ve come together to create the series: producers, editors, writers, project execs, production assistants, the majority from the Asian American community,” Bieber said. “It’s been an amazing process to see it come together with people who are completely passionate about the subject matter.” Young credits Bieber and WETA with initiating a successful partnership that will have positive ramifications for the Asian American filmmaking community for years to come.

In addition to the series, educators, led by Asian American Advancing Justice, are creating curriculum for teachers to use in the classrooms using the series. “We open the door to succeeding generations to understand that American history has many complications, and it’s not exactly what you think,” Bieber added.

The creative team was conscientious about not only focusing on East Asian Americans—Chinese, Korean, and Japanese., Often the default for Asian American stories focused on those groups. 

Young, who has produced dozens of films, said this was the most ambitious project he has worked on, and is proud of the series. “The series tries to be thoughtful in regards to Asian American responsibility, in relation to other communities of color, taking inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement to partnering with Latinos during the UFW strike. We’ve tried to be more intersectional than other shows have, and we are particularly proud of that.” 

Each piece of history and almost every event has ties and relevancy to current times, from the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 1880s to Japanese American incarceration during WWII relating to migrants being held in cages at the border today.

Ultimately, the series both reveals the struggles as well as resistance and alliance-building of various communities.

“It’s really kind of a picture of how we can figure out ways to come together as Americans,” Tajima-Peña said. “Race is not something that always divides us. We have this identity that is based on race, but we have multiple identities. It’s figuring out how to walk together. Everybody who has worked on the series are optimists. We think things can change, that people can work together. You can’t do that by putting on rose-colored glasses, we have to have clear eyes about where we were, and where we are now.”