Renée
Tajima-Peña

Renée Tajima-Peña is a documentary filmmaker and writer. She received a BA from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1980. In her work, she explores themes of class, race, migration, the construction of masculinity, and family to, in her words, “infiltrate a marginalized culture into mainstream consciousness.” Her feature, Who Killed Vincent Chin (1987), which recounts the story of an automotive engineer who was mistaken for Japanese and killed in retaliation for a Japanese automaker that was threatening the murderer’s job, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary. My America…or Honk if You Love Buddha (1997), follows the director’s cross-country road trip in search of Asian America.

Portrait photo courtesy Tyrone Turner.