Wisdom in the Shadows of Dementia
In 1999, Rose Tajiri, a second-generation Japanese-American, was diagnosed with dementia. She was 76. Over the following years, as her condition worsened, her daughter, filmmaker Rea Tajiri, became her caregiver.
In Wisdom Gone Wild Rea documents the journey that she and her mother took together, a journey that sees them navigate both the now of life with dementia and the past as Rose recalls memories from her early years, including the time she spent in an internment camp during the Second World War.
The result is, as Matthew Sherwood describes it, a film that is ‘tender, bittersweet, [and] poignant’. Rea calls the film a ‘cinematic poem’, which follows the lines of her mother’s thought process, her ‘dream logic’.
As Rea makes clear, caring for her mother brought highs and lows, sometimes in unexpected places; Rose’s condition brought danger, but also the opportunity to explore, to find meaning. Most of all, it brought wisdom, not just in one area, but several: beauty, beauty in art, and in spiritual matters among others.
Rea discusses her family’s accepting response to her filming her and her mother’s journey, the influence of her late father – a professional photographer – on this project, and offers advice born of her own experience to anyone who might be in the same situation: surrender, connect, enjoy. Living with dementia can be hard, but also meaningful, and even profound.
“It was important to me to centre the film around how [my mother] communicated. I wanted to maybe have the viewer adjust a little bit of how they experience dementia.” – Rea Tajiri
Time Stamps
00:00 – Trailer for Wisdom Gone Wild
02:24 – Matthew Sherwood introduces this episode’s guest, Rea Tajiri, and her film, Wisdom Gone Wild
04:43 – Rea explains what Wisdom Gone Wild is about
06:27 – Rose Tajiri’s background
09:01 – Rea on living with Rose’s dementia
12:13 – Dementia: discovery and adaptation
17:52 – The wisdoms at the heart of the film
20:35 – How Rea came to make Wisdom Gone Wild
23:59 – Rea’s family’s response to her making the film
24:41 – Rea on the difficulty of going in front of the camera
25:40 – Filmgoers’ positive response to the film
27:40 – The difficulties of being a caregiver
32:14 – Rea’s advice for anyone caring for someone with dementia
34:12 – What’s next for Rea
Resources:
Wisdom Gone Wild
MovieMaker Magazine
Innersound Audio
Alamo Pictures
Connect with Rea Tajiri
More from Factual America:
Last Flight Home: The Death and Life of Eli Timoner
Working: What We Do All Day featuring Barack Obama
Happiness is a Journey: The Unseen America
Transcript for Factual America Episode 147: Wisdom in the Shadows of Dementia
Matthew Sherwood 00:00 (02:24)
This is Factual America. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood. Each week, I watch a hit documentary, and then talk with the filmmakers and their subjects. Wisdom Gone Wild is a tender, bittersweet look at a mother in the twilight years of her life, which also sheds light on the nature of wisdom, memory, and reality in the shadows of dementia. Join us as we learn more about Rose Tajiri, as filmed by her youngest child, award-winning artist and filmmaker, Rea Tajiri. Wisdom Gone Wild is an incredibly intimate and poignant film that you will not want to miss. Stay tuned.
Matthew Sherwood 00:42
Rea Tajiri, welcome to Factual America. How are things with you?
Rea Tajiri 00:45
Very good. Thank you for inviting me to be in conversation with you this evening.
Matthew Sherwood 00:51
Well, it's very much appreciated, as you say, this evening, because although you're US based, you're in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam to be more precise, this evening. And we're UK based, and we're talking about Wisdom Gone Wild. It's done the festival circuit in 2022, I know. It's IDFA nominee for Best Feature-Length doc. So, hence why you're in Amsterdam. So, congratulations on that. I know you got best doc at Blackstar, and you've had a host of other wins. So, and maybe more, just as important, let's say, is it's releasing on PBS in America on November 20. We do have PBS here in the UK. I'm not sure if it will be showing there. But if you're not US based, everyone, do have a look out for this film. So, welcome and congratulations again on all the accolades and your success.
Rea Tajiri 01:44
Thank you. I just want to make one small correction is that I was an Honourable Mention jury - Honourable Mention at Blackstar because I don't want to upstage the actual Best Documentary Feature winner. So, just wanted to say that.
Matthew Sherwood 01:59
Thank you for correcting me. So, before we - maybe - the way we usually kick-off is I ask our guest, and in this case yourself, what is Wisdom Gone Wild all about, and give us a synopsis.
Rea Tajiri 02:14 (04:43)
Sure. So, Wisdom Gone Wild is essentially a film about caregiving a loved one. And in this case, it's my mother. And my mother - I was my mother's caregiver for 16 years. And it is told - is basically a cinematic poem. That's how I call it. It has a poetic - it follows a poetic structure. It follows her dream logic, because that's how she communicated with us. It was important to me to kind of centre the film around how she communicated. I wanted to kind of maybe have the viewer adjust a little bit of how they experience dementia. And I was able to draw upon a lovely archive of photographs. My father was a professional photographer. He took great family photos. So, it kind of jumps around to different moments of her life. And it basically honours the span of her life. And I think this is something that when you take care of someone who lives with dementia, you'll see how they may go back and forth into their memory and call up different moments from their life, and I wanted to mirror that in the film. So, yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 03:30
Well, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about your mother. Who was she? She lived a long and fruitful life, I gather. But, you know, as you said, your father was a photographer and documented your lives. But I mean, I guess - so, you tell us about your mother, but also there was - this past that you didn't know much about. Is that correct?
Rea Tajiri 03:58 (06:27)
Right. So, my mother was a really intriguing person. She was very mysterious, very secretive, very private. She was born in the 20s during the Depression. She's a Nisei, so she's second generation Japanese-American. Her parents immigrated, you know, the turn of the century. They were farmers. So, she grew up in, you know, Japanese-American farming community in Salinas, California. And I don't know that much about her early life except little, you know, little stories and things, but I did find some photos which are in the film, which were really kind of astonishing, I guess, because they were poor, but somebody must have had a camera. So, she appears to be very plucky. You know, at one point, she's holding a camera, which is great. And she was very creative. I think if she had had the opportunity, she would probably would have been an artist or an art historian. She loved art. And, you know, she expressed her creativity, she became a beautician. And so, she married my father, she went through the US concentration camps during World War Two. She was in Poston, Arizona, and she was able to leave to marry my father who was in the US Army at that point. When the war was over, they ended up settling in Chicago. She, you know, she had three kids. I'm the youngest of the three. And she was eccentric, and she loved art. So, she dragged us to art museums, my brother is a jazz musician, my sister was a painter, and I'm the baby and I became the filmmaker. So, she had a big influence on our creativity. And then, you know, I think late in life, was able to go back to college and studied art history, and was deeply enmeshed in that. So, that kind of is, in a nutshell, who she was; she, you know, she did not have a career, she stopped working at a certain point, and kind of devoted herself to being a housewife, and a mother.
Matthew Sherwood 06:18
And so, as you say, you were her caregiver for the last 16 years of her life. What did you discover in that process? So, you know, what personal insights did you have? And then I'll have a follow-up, but, yeah, what did you discover.
Rea Tajiri 06:32 (09:01)
So, you know, in the beginning, like most people will tell you, it was very, very devastating. And I remember thinking, Oh, I really, you know, she's gonna forget everything, and I have all these questions I want to ask her. And I still never got the answer to these deep mysteries in her life. And, you know, and I felt like, Okay, I'm gonna lose all this important information, right. And it was very frustrating in the beginning, and then I sort of had this breakthrough at one point where I started to realise, like, you know, and probably through exhaustion, if I just follow her logic, and if I just follow - enter her world, and just kind of go with the flow of what she's telling me, I actually am starting to learn more about her by just letting her go through this process. And it was kind of like, you know, I say, a dream; was kind of like, all these kind of things that she had mentioned. They were connected to real things in her life. So, she might be talking symbolically, you know; she would say things that sounded really nonsensical, but they turned out to be connected to something that happened to her. So, I did end up learning more about her and her camp experience, things that she didn't want to talk about, you know, and such.
Matthew Sherwood 07:56
And what personal insights did you gain about dementia itself? This, this thing, that's not even a disease, we don't even know really what it, you know, it's just this thing that - and I have some personal experience with it myself, you know, it's this kind of long - you know, you - this, you slowly see someone disappear before your eyes in many ways, or at least the person you knew. So, did you gain any insights yourself about dementia?
Rea Tajiri 08:27
Um, you know, I think dementia affects everybody very differently. My mom - I was in - I had her in three different - I kept moving her; she was in three different assisted living. But along that way, I got to observe a lot of people who had dementia or mild cognitive impairment, you know, they have different names for it sometimes, but I did meet a lot of people and a lot of families. I really felt like the thing that I learned was, I had to kind of recalibrate my expectations and kind of just slow down and give in and surrender to the process. That actually - you know, we're so used to, you know, having to control things and having - things follow a certain logic, but kind of letting go of that, and just kind of going with what presented itself, turned out to be the most generative, and productive, and creative way of engaging and communicating. So, I felt like I was able to find ways to connect with my mother and, you know, find meaning in the experience with her.
Matthew Sherwood 09:40 (12:13)
And, you know, and so, as you say, your first reaction was that it was - this is devastate - this is going to be devastating, all these things, but then it does happen over the course of so many years. I mean, how does that, you know, do you find yourself - did you find yourself adjusting? Did you - you know, it almost becomes - it's a huge segment of your life and her life as well.
Rea Tajiri 10:07
Yeah, I think, um, it was, yeah, it's a long process, right. I think, actually, when the onset came on, I was at, you know, a very big career breakthrough as a filmmaker. I was going to Venice, I was going to go to the Venice Film Festival. And it was something we had been, you know, like, dreaming, and yeah, the film was finished, it's going to these, you know, we entered it in festivals. And then I got the news on one day, Okay, we're gonna go to Venice. So, I called her, we were excited, we were, you know, sort of celebrating on the phone. She said, Call me tomorrow, let's talk some more. I called her the next day. And it was as though there was this other person on the phone. And she said, Who are you? She thought I was an imposter. And she had no recollection of the conversation we had the day before. And I was, of course, completely devastated and shocked. So, you know, that was the beginning. And there was a period - that was in 1997. So, there was a period of about two years, you know, was just thrashing around talking to people, doing research, trying different things. And we found a gerontologist, and I got a diagnosis in 1999, of course, it was the thing that I'd feared, you know, the big thing that everyone's afraid of is dementia and Alzheimer's. And so, then I, you know, I had to come to terms with that and sit with grief and the loss. And after a period of time, I started thinking about, well, what am I losing here? What will, you know, what's going to happen? And in that process came to say, Okay, well, maybe if I think that, you know, I will not be able to connect, talk to her anymore, how do I learn to accept that? What do I do now? What are the steps I can take now? And that kind of turned into a kind of process of like, well, what do we like to do? We like to go to museums. Well, let's go to museums, then, you know. And so, I found things that we liked to do together, and that we could do together in the present moment. And that turned into this really - like, an opening for both of us. We started to - you know, my mom had these incredibly interesting insights, almost like a childlike, you know, kind of view of art, which was very fresh, and not intellectual, it was just really kind of very spontaneous in the moment, emotional responses. So, it was really interesting to sort of see her in that new way. And so, that was like, Okay, maybe, you know, there are interesting ways to provide stimulation, that might shift her a little bit. And that's kind of what we - I kept doing and trying with her, it became a thing of trying different things, and failing sometimes, and having also miserable periods where she wouldn't respond to anything, and it was extremely frustrating. And just finding ways to connect to friends and family for support, you know, but also just kind of, you know, I started out saying it was about, like, my career, and I felt really like, oh, you know, this is really heavy. I didn't feel like making work. But I also - and I also felt this identity loss, but then I started to kind of realise, you know, caregiving is a really important thing. It's - you're really sustaining another person at the end of their life, this could be actually a very beautiful experience, if you give into it and say, well, maybe I don't need to be this, you know, front and centre. I have this career front and centre right now. And that was, you know, it's kind of a negotiation there. But it turned out to be very interesting and profound in that way. I think it's more about, you know, about life itself, you know.
Matthew Sherwood 13:54
Right.
Rea Tajiri 13:54
Yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 13:55
Well, actually, let's hold that thought. We're gonna give our listeners and viewers an early break. So we'll be right back with award-winning artist and filmmaker, Rea Tajiri, writer, producer, and director of Wisdom Gone Wild, releasing on PBS in the US on November 20.
Factual America Midroll 14:14
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or X to keep up-to-date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the programme, our guests, and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.
Matthew Sherwood 14:32 (17:52)
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with award-winning filmmaker Rea Tajiri. She's the writer, producer and director of Wisdom Gone Wild. It's releasing on PBS on November 20. It's done the film festival circuit, and it's at IDFA at the moment, a nominee for Best Feature Length doc. We were talking about, you know, your experience as a caregiver with your mother, and you had also been talking earlier about how you sort of just learned to communicate with her on sort of her terms, if you will. I mean, so this - and you filmed the last years of her life as you are her caregiver. What do you - maybe for our audience, what do you catch - what did you capture? I mean, because the other thing is, the film really - we can get to this point, you've already talked about this, as you described it as 'cinematic poem'. It sort of centres on these - on this reality of these wisdoms in the shadows of dementia. So, what are these wisdoms? And what do they tell us about memory and reality and life?
Rea Tajiri 15:42
I mentioned that I was looking for these, you know, I think these different ways that my mother had, you know, these - her eccentricities, I guess, and I also, you know, the way that the film was shot was, it wasn't like I said, Okay, we're going to hire a crew, we're going to sit, you know, we're going do a verity, we're going to, you know, come to this location every day, we're going to watch life unfold, it was kind of, well, it started out first as I'm not shooting her, everyone said, Oh, you must make a film, because I would come to visit friends or I'd see my family. I'd say, Oh, my gosh, this thing happened today was amazing. My mom said this to me. And then I said, this, you know, was that kind of thing. And it's, Oh, you got to film this. And I said, No, I'm not doing that. But over time. I wanted to keep in touch with people. I was away a lot. And family wanted to know how we were doing. So, I shot little photos, I shot little clips on my iPhone, with my point-and-shoot. And I just collected all these cool things, and I would send them to people, and people were like, This is really interesting, like, you really should make a film. And I kept saying, No, I don't want to. And then after a while it started to go, you know, I started seeing the accumulation. I went, Maybe I should, you know, maybe this is actually - you know, I also started to realise the more I was doing this, I had a lot of insights into caregiving that other people didn't have, who were just starting the process, I need to share this experience, I need to, you know, kind of let people know, like, add to this conversation, which is, you know, of course, always about devastation. And there's other parts, there's other dimensions to caregiving. So, so, yeah, so, I started saying, Okay, let's see how, like, there's this, you know, I had to find ways to kind of categorise these different things that I had of her. And so I organised it around these wisdoms, and so it was like beauty, beauty in art, animals, spirit - she was very spiritual - and that's kind of, you know, how I came up with that.
Matthew Sherwood 17:54 (20:35)
And those are the kind of the stanzas of the poem, are kind of organised around that. And did you - I mean, so, as you're saying, your friends are telling you, you need to make a film, but when did you decide? When did - how did you know you had a film on your hands? I mean, and also this consideration, you want to be protective of your mother, what do you, you know, reveal or not reveal.
Rea Tajiri 18:17
Yeah. That was a really important - those were very important questions I had throughout. So, I guess it was pretty late in the process, because I, you know, it started in 1997, and this is maybe now going to 2014. And I think I was at that point where I felt like I, you know, it was - things were starting to gel and I felt like yes, I really do have something to say here. So, let's do some test shooting. Let me go out and I'll hire a DP. I'll go out, we'll do this - I know what we'll do, we'll go to the art museum because that's one of our favourite things to do. And it will be the most generative. She'll be very excited and, you know, we'll be very connected. And so, we went out and we shot what is in the film as the streamers, the yellow streamers, at LACMA. And that, you know, we were shooting different things, looking at art; my mom was making her usual comments, and then we decided to go out to the yard, and I had never seen this installation before, and we just kind of wheeled in and then this magic just started to happen. And I was really floored. I'm like, Oh, wow, I don't believe this is happening. It was very cinematic and very beautiful. And it was just one of those, you know, as a filmmaker, you know you've hit on something; like, something has just completely, you know, the universe is, like, everything is gelling in the most really beautiful way, and we had this gorgeous footage, and I knew - I mean, I could tell, I was even shooting with my little point-and-shoot. And my mother - basically what happens is my mother enters this installation, this art installation, and these children come up. And they're completely fascinated with her. And of course, she's completely fascinated with them. And they just start, like, reaching towards each other and laughing and playing. And, you know, of course the children are not - they're young, they're maybe toddler and a little older. And they're not necessarily like, you know, they're not like, they're okay with her, kind of, the way she communicates. They're just totally accepting of her. And mostly what she's expressing is her joy, and she's laughing, and then they start laughing. And then, you know, in this installation, the way it's set up is that you can run through these, like hanging streamers, so they're very free. And so, there's this pure joy and delight in that scene. And that's what we captured. And then I said, Okay, I think we can do this, you know, this will be really interesting.
Matthew Sherwood 20:50
But you had been filming, you know, you have footage in there from what - I mean, you're a filmmaker, so, obviously, you've - at different times you've filmed your family and your...
Rea Tajiri 20:59
Yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 21:00
... and your mother, but you've - was this something that was, without maybe knowing, was always in the works?
Rea Tajiri 21:06
Well, I think that like, you know, sometimes you take photos, you go, Well, maybe I'll use this someday for something. You shoot a clip, you go, You know, I might use this for something or, you know, maybe this is a sketch, you know, I can build something off of this sketch, right. I am always shooting little things, right. I think, yeah, if you're a filmmaker, you're always seeing ideas in the world, so.
Matthew Sherwood 21:30 (23:59)
And what about your family? I mean, they must have, you know, did they push back on this? Or did they think it was a great idea?
Rea Tajiri 21:40
You know, my family is - they don't question it. Oh, here's the camera again, okay, hi. And in fact, they'll like, goof me up, they'll try to goof up. My brother will try to do something that will annoy me. You know, it's - my father, though, was always pulling out the camera, and we did the same thing to him, you know. Well, here he is with the camera, he'll stick it in our face, we're gonna make a, you know, a face to him. Yeah, so we were all used to this kind of photography and filming.
Matthew Sherwood 22:12 (24:41)
But many filmmakers I've interviewed say they could never imagine going in front of the camera. But you are in front of the camera in this film. How did you feel about that? Was that difficult?
Rea Tajiri 22:25
It was difficult. It was more difficult to edit because you have to look at yourself and go, Oh, God, I looked horrible that day. You know, everything from like - yeah, it just - yeah, it was really hard. You know, I worked with an editor, obviously. But what my producer said to me was, you know, you're gonna have to be in it. Because, you know, by default, it's about caregiving. You can't just be behind the camera, and you have to see - it's about the two of you, you have to be the two of you engaging, you know. So, that's what kind of ended up happening.
Matthew Sherwood 23:07 (25:40)
Okay, and what's the reaction been to this film, besides the critical acclaim?
Rea Tajiri 23:17
I think that people - I mean, I'm very happy because I think for the most part, people who are caregivers, and people who are ageing, and surprisingly young people, are finding the film to be very emotionally resonant. They connect to it, they see - so, people are caregivers see their experience mirrored; they see themselves acknowledged. I think caregiving is, for the most part, it's pretty invisible, right. So, I think they're pretty happy to see this representation, I guess.
Matthew Sherwood 23:58
And least - it's my personal impression, maybe - but, you know, when, I mean, caregivers generally, but certainly, I think as a society we're, you know, if we know someone's got cancer or a terminal illness, there's something there, but I almost feel like as being part of a family that's been through something like this, you don't really feel like - you don't realise others are going through this, and what it really means, you know. Well, you can do this certainly - as you did and probably much better job - you know, this first couple years searching trying to find out. I mean, it was - I'm talking about my late father, I mean, you know, he wouldn't even let us take him to the doctor, so we never got...
Rea Tajiri 24:43
Oh yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 24:43
... so, you never get the diagnosis. So, you don't really know, and then there's this hope - sometimes you get these false hopes and glimmers that maybe this isn't as bad and then it just - before you know it ten years have passed, and - I mean, when he passed away, we even real--- you know, started talking around it, we realised that it actually had started much earlier than we had even realised.
Rea Tajiri 25:07 (27:40)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my, you know, my mom was not an easy person to care for. It looks like she was, but she really wasn't, in the sense like, she - so, you know, I lived in New York, she was in Los Angeles at the time. And then I moved to Philly. But, you know, I couldn't be there all the time, and then there were points at which, you know, she was doing things that were dangerous in the house, like starting little fires, and, you know, things that, you know, oh, there's a beehive in your wall upstairs, you know, just like, Ahh! right, you're freaking out. She tried to store sushi and then - in the oven, and then say, Hey, hi, here. And I'm like, Ah! You know, are you eating this? No, you know we can't eat this; no, stop. You know, things that just did not make sense, and they were scary. So, I tried to get a caregiver to come in, to help her out, and she would lock her out; she would trick her and lock her out. You know, I mean, she was not an easy person - she did not want anyone to take care of her. And she was fiercely independent. And, you know, yeah, I understand to a degree, but it was really hard. And I couldn't convince her to go to a doctor. But I found ways to get her to go, you know. And I didn't even want to get into this whole shenanigans. But yeah, yeah, she - it was extremely difficult. And, yeah, sorry, where we're we going with this?!
Matthew Sherwood 26:37
Well, I was just talking about how, you know, what's the reaction been to this film, and you've said how it's resonated with people, including young people. And I think my reaction was then, I think, probably for a lot of us, it feels like a film - I mean, there have been other films, we've had them on, who have dealt with sort of end of life issues and things like that. But maybe there are others, but this one, really, without, you know, it is - I imagine that you get pigeonholed, but I imagine people say, Oh, it's a film about dementia, but it is so much more than that, obviously. But at the same time, it is a film about dementia in that for those of us who - and those who are maybe starting to go through it - it was kind of a, Oh, well, yeah, I recognise this. I know these sort of situations where they don't, you know, the person doesn't recognise you, or seemingly, maybe they're mixing up history or memories. Or maybe they're not in a way, in a way they're remembering things maybe in a different way that we - that's not conventional, right, so it's this other world that you don't even real - at least, you don't even realise you're entering, you know, at the time, so I think, I would imagine this has resonated with a lot of people.
Rea Tajiri 28:03
Yeah, yeah. I was gonna say that, like, you know, you mentioned misremembering, so there's an example in the film that I really - she always - people would say, Oh, does your mother remember who you are? That was always the thing that people would ask me. And to me, it was sort of like beside the point because, yes, and she thought I was her sister. But I kind of, I don't know why, but it made sense to me. And I didn't mind that she - and I - okay, we're in cahoots together, this is more fun than being, like, her daughter, and she's gotta take care of me was, Hey, we're gonna go out and have an adventure today. Let's go shopping. You know, let's buy clothes, whatever. It was - I just went with it because it was - I knew it would be interesting, right. And then after a while, I realised, you know, her sister was an artist - this is the sister who died...
Matthew Sherwood 28:53
Right.
Rea Tajiri 28:53
... that's so interesting that she's like saying, Oh, you're Betty, you know, because, in fact, I'm an artist. So, that's cool. And then, now I'm thinking about Betty, and I never really thought about her. And that was really lovely to me, you know, so, you know, I kind of got something out of that. If that makes any sense, right.
Matthew Sherwood 29:12
Yeah. Yeah, no, no, I can certainly see that. I mean, the story in my family that was told recently was that my father just turned to my mother and basically said, I'm your husband, right? And she's like, Yes. He was, Well, who's that man on the wall? And it was their wedding picture, you know? What's he doing?
Rea Tajiri 29:37
'If I'm your husband, who's that?'
Matthew Sherwood 29:39
... who is that guy, you know.
Rea Tajiri 29:41
Yeah, yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 29:41 (32:14)
... so, well, what - I mean, do you - and this is a bad question to ask - but, you know, do you - what advice would you give? Or do you feel like you can give advice to those who have loved ones who are suffering.
Rea Tajiri 29:55
I do get asked this a lot. And so, you know, this is because - I'm gonna give this answer because this is actually my philosophy about caregiving that I developed, you know, and it's just that you have to - this is not a popular American kind of sensibility, but I'm gonna say it, anyway - you know, you really do have to surrender in a certain way. There's nothing you can do. You know, sure they're gonna find a cure, but I don't think that that's really going to happen in the way that people want, you know, right now, right, you know, and so for the time being, I feel like, you know, the best you can do is make somebody's life meaningful, right, and take care of them and make them comfortable, and enjoy and connect, finding different ways to connect. So, sometimes that means surrendering, don't correct them. Stop - you know, I did it for years, because I was embarrassed: Oh, my God, she's saying this, I better correct her. So, you know, but no, stop that. And then kind of allowing her and listening really deeply, you know, just not thinking about what I'm going to say, but really taking in what she was saying. Even if sometimes it didn't make sense, later on, I go, That does make sense. You know, like, I would figure out that she was really trying to communicate something that was important. And that I should really just listen and be, you know, be the listener for once. And then I learned a lot that way. So, I don't know, these are things that I found, made the experience more tolerable, but also very meaningful and very profound, so.
Matthew Sherwood 31:31 (34:12)
I think that's great advice, and I think it's great advice for life in general. You know. I should probably leave things there, but we are coming to the end of our time. And just before we do go, what's next for you? Are you just relishing this great - all this great stuff that's happening around this film, and being in Amsterdam for this festival and all the accolades.
Rea Tajiri 32:01
I'm here, because, actually, so Wisdom played last year in competition. And I won the Chicken and Egg Award, which is this amazing award given to eight filmmakers. It's a career boost. And it culminates in - you go to IDFA, and you have a new project that you're developing, and you get to meet with people. So, I'm here working. I have a new project in development. It's about my father, it's called Non Alien. And it's about my father who was a photo journalist, and he was the founding photography editor for Playboy magazine. But it's not about that. It's really focusing on a time in his life right after World War Two, when he was trying to figure out what to do, and it was very uncertain times. And he started documenting Japanese-Americans who were settling in Chicago, arriving from the camps, and just kind of documenting their lives. And so, again, it's poetic, it's going to be told through a series of set pieces based on his photos. And it has a sort of, I set it up so that there's - I draw, I'm drawing from writings, he was a newspaper writer. So, from the 30s to the 40s. So, his newspaper articles and then his grandson, who's my nephew, his writing, so I kind of have them in conversation.
Matthew Sherwood 33:30
Oh, wow.
Rea Tajiri 33:31
Yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 33:31
That's incredible. That's, well, if we haven't scared you off, we'd love to have you back on to discuss that whenever that drops.
Rea Tajiri 33:39
Yeah.
Matthew Sherwood 33:40
So, good luck with that. And it's nice to have a filmmaker who can actually tell us what their next project is. So many of them tell us, Oh, I can't tell you yet. It's still - you know, so thank you so much.
Rea Tajiri 33:51
Thank you so much for the conversation.
Matthew Sherwood 33:53
Well, thank you and thank you for this - I - you know, I know it's a deeply personal film. So, thank you to you and your family for sharing this and your mother's life. So, just remind our listeners and viewers we've been talking to award-winning filmmaker, Rea Tajiri, the writer, producer, and director of Wisdom Gone Wild, releasing on PBS on November 20. Check it out. Thanks again.
Matthew Sherwood 34:23
Thanks again for joining us on Factual America. A big shout-out to everyone at Innersound Audio in York, England for their great studio and fine editing and production skills. A big thanks to Amy Ord, our podcast manager, who ensures we continue getting great guests onto the show, and that everything otherwise runs smoothly. Finally, a big thanks to you our listeners. Please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas. Whether it is on YouTube, social media, or directly by email. And please also remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.
Factual America Outro 35:04
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