East Coast Premiere / USA / 2025 / English / 98 min / Drama
Director: James Takata; Writer: James Takata, Dara Resnik; Producers: Dara Resnik, Jon Huertas, Jhennifer Webberley, Jen Prince.
Contact: californiascenariomovie@gmail.com
Key Cast: Will Yun Lee, Abby Miller, Brooklynn Prince, Minnie Mills, Jon Huertas, Jes Macallan, James Saito, Jean Yoon, Ellen Greene
When single parents Jacob and Laura separately bring their struggling children to Noguchi’s sculpture garden to grapple with shared family legacies of survival, they discover the possibility of building something new together… one day.
Director Biography – James Takata
James Takata is a director, writer, and cinematographer. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the International Cinematographers Guild Local 600.
James’ television directorial debut was on the NBC series This Is Us. He has also directed episodes of ABC’s The Company You Keep and Criminal Minds: Evolution for Paramount+. He is the director and co-writer of the indie feature California Scenario, starring Will Yun Lee (The Good Doctor), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), Abby Miller (Home Before Dark), and Minnie Mills (The Summer I Turned Pretty). James also directed 2nd Unit for additional episodes of The Company You Keep.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Takata was inspired to become a filmmaker by Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. He earned his B.A. in Studio Art from the College of William and Mary, with studies at the Art Institute of Florence.
As a cinematographer, Takata lensed the series The Horror of Dolores Roach for Amazon and shot several episodes of This Is Us while serving as the A Camera/Steadicam operator. He also contributed additional cinematography to the Hulu series Paradise.
Takata was selected for the DGA’s prestigious Director Development Mentorship Program in 2024, where he was paired with mentor Bethany Rooney. He is an alumnus of Film Independent’s Project Involve and won an Emerging Cinematographer Award from the International Cinematographers Guild in 2012.
Director Statement
I grew up in the 1980s hearing tales from my relatives about “camp.” Unfortunately, those stories weren’t about picturesque summers by the lake, but memories of time spent in concentration camps during WWII. I’m only one generation removed from that experience — my mom was born in the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. In the years following the war, my family found a way to persevere and thrive, so our stories shared a tone of “all’s well that ends well.”
But when I had my own family, I began to wonder what fills the space left when language and traditions are buried. What psychic scars remain when your entire community is forced from their homes, even if some eventually returned to them? Current research on epigenetics and trans-generational trauma speaks to the ways that the past is encoded in our DNA. I feel that the echoes of the past continue to play out in my life and the lives of my parents, children and family. I see it in how we avoid conflict and difficult conversations, how we quickly put a positive spin on terrible experiences, and in a tendency towards a fatalism characterized by the Japanese phrase: sho ga nai (it can’t be helped).
California Scenario examines how our present lives are deeply informed by events of the past. Many years ago, while visiting Japan, I was re-introduced to the transcendent art of Isamu Noguchi. As an art major, I was familiar with his sculpture and design, but I had no idea how fascinating and resonant he would become for me. I discovered that we had much in common. We are both artists who spent time in our early twenties studying art in Europe, who believe that art has the potential to elevate human beings spiritually and socially. We are nikkei-jin (people of Japanese ancestry) who know the feeling of being an outsider in both Japan and the US. He was bi-racial, like my daughters, at a time when that was exceedingly rare. Noguchi’s friend Buckminster Fuller called him “the founding member of an omni-crossbred world society.”
Sponsored by: Robert Plotka