Chen hosted a screening of his short documentary “Grandpa Cherry Blossom” at Mira Costa High School on July 18. The film centers around Francis Miyosaku Uyematsu, who immigrated to the United States from Japan in 1904. He founded Star Nurseries, a successful flower company with plots of land not only in Manhattan Beach, but also in Montebello and Sierra Madre, Calif.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, legislation was enacted which forced Japanese Americans from their homes and into internment camps. During this time, Uyematsu and his family were transported to Manzanar Internment Camp in eastern California, and Uyematsu was compelled to sell his property. When Uyematsu returned, his land in Manhattan Beach had been turned into housing developments and educational facilities, now Mira Costa High School and Pennekamp Elementary School.
Chen first got the idea to create “Grandpa Cherry Blossom” after passing a plaque on Mira Costa’s campus commemorating Uyematsu’s ownership of the land. He then pitched the idea to his professor in a film course that he took at the University of Southern California during the summer of 2022. He worked on the first cut throughout the program.
“During my junior year of high school, a little over a year and a half ago, I walked by the plaque,” Chen said. “I didn’t know anything about Francis Uyematsu, and found the story very interesting, so I decided to look into it a little more. I thought it could make a really good documentary. I took a summer class at USC, which gave me the opportunity to make my film using professional equipment and advice from my professor.”
To learn more about Uyematsu’s story, Chen interviewed Mary Uyematsu, his granddaughter, and Chuck Currier, a local historian and former Mira Costa history teacher. Then, he filmed B-roll of various locations in Manhattan Beach where Uyematsu’s flowers were once cultivated. However, Chen said restrictions on filming private property proved to be an obstacle in the production of his documentary.
“I got some footage at Mira Costa, but I had to film from the street, and I tried to film at other places where Francis’ flowers were,” Chen said. “It was frustrating because you have to get permits to film in certain places and get the owners of the property to sign off, so there were several locations where I wasn’t able to get footage.”
After filming interviews and B-roll, Chen then sat down to the slow process of editing the footage. According to Chen, this step in the process was the most time-consuming, as it requires both smooth transitions and the organization of the footage to form a coherent story. While he had an idea of the outline of his film when he began to create it, the story only became fully formed once he had begun the editing process.
“Editing is the longest [part of the process] because it’s when you put together the story,” Chen said. “When you start the documentary, you have an idea of what it’s going to be, but when you get the interviews and the footage, you have no control over what your interviewees are going to say, and the story shifts.”
Chen’s film “Grandpa Cherry Blossom” has received numerous accolades and awards, and has been screened at several film festivals. (Photo courtesy of Maddox Chen)
According to Chen, the most rewarding feedback on his film has come from his community. Because the film is so locally focused, it is important to him to spread awareness throughout the Manhattan Beach community about the history of the land that was once owned by the Uyematsus.
“I think that the most important thing is showing the film to people in the community, even more so than the film festivals,” Chen said. “The ultimate goal of the film was to spread awareness and give people a better understanding of the land they’re walking on.”
Chen recently finished filming his next project, a narrative film co-directed with Mira Costa senior Kaden Socrates and made in conjunction with the Mira Costa Cinema Club. According to Chen, the process behind creating a narrative film differs greatly from filming a documentary because he has much greater control over the storyline when shooting a narrative film.
“In a documentary, you don’t really have any control of the storyline, because you are depicting an actual story that has happened,” Chen said. “You’re also recording real people who don’t have scripted lines of dialogue and are just going to say whatever they want to say. You have to piece together a story from what’s already happened. With a narrative film, you start from scratch and it’s a lot more controlled. You have a script, actors who say lines of dialogue, and a shot list of the shots you want to do.”
Chen will be a freshman at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts this fall, where he plans to major in film. According to Chen, he hopes to meet new people and challenge himself both artistically and technically as he continues to study film.
“Being able to be part of an actual film community is going to be really nice,” Chen said. “I hope to develop my technical skills and the creative and story aspects of my films. I also want to try new things, like different mediums and genres.”
