PRODUCTION NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR

Overstay was in the making for several years before it was completed in 1998. I began fundraising in 1993 andwent to Tokyo to begin research on the film in October 1994 as a Japan Foundation Artist fellow. I spent over a year doing research and then shooting the film over an eight month period in Japan. Since I had been away from Japan for several years, it took me a few months to reacquaint myself with the current situation of foreign migrant workers in Japan.

My impulse for making this Overstay stemmed from two things: I lived in Japan for over three years from 1986 to 1990, and at that time, there still were not many foreign workers in Japan. When I visited Japan during the summer of 1991, I was struck by the increased number of foreign faces that I noticed. I also heard languages on the train that I had not heard before. Many of these new visitors were highlighted on the news, and I wondered what the experiences of these new immigrants were. Having experienced difficulties living in Japan as a gaijin,, I was curious about how these people, who had little vested interest in Japan, experienced their new home. I also found it ironic that Japan, which had sent its own citizens abroad (among them my grandparents who immigrated to the U.S.) only a hundred years ago, had now become a host to others who perceived it as the new "Asian Promised Land."

Overstay was shot on Hi-8 video and 16mm film. I shot most of the verite footage on Hi-8, over a period of about eight months. Interviews with the principal characters and the footage of Japan were shot on 16mm film in August 1995. Locations included Tokyo, Nishinomiya (a city located between Osaka and Kobe), and Shimodate (outside of Tokyo). The crew consisted of four people: Jennifer Jew (director of photography); Yamamoto Hiroaki (sound recordist); a fourth person who was a driver, and myself (director/producer). Shooting the film became a multilingual affair since I had to translate for Jennifer who does not speak Japanese and for the whole crew who does not speak Spanish.

I met all of the people in the film through various non-governmental agencies whom I had contacted. I owe much of my success in accessing these organizations to my connections at the Pacific Asia Resource Center and specifically, Yamagishi Motoko who formerly had worked there. I met the three Pakistani guys and Sally through OC Net, the Japanese language school; Hikari through the Koshien Catholic Church; and Hassan through Foreign Labor Union (FLU). Surprisingly, I found most immigrants eager to talk to me because they perceived me as a gaijin (foreigner) as well. Because I contacted them through organizations that they trusted, they also felt more at ease in participating in my project despite their undocumented status.

It took me a few months to find my subjects and to develop relationships with them so that they felt comfortable with me and my camera. I communicated with the Pakistani guys and Hassan in Japanese; Sally in English; and Hikari in Spanish. I chose to let them do the interviews in their native language because I felt that they should be able to communicate their ideas freely instead of feeling hindered in expressing themselves in a non-native language. However, this created a very interesting situation when I was conducting interviews for the film since I did not understand their responses and had to depend on them to paraphrase their answers to me in a language that I did understand.

I was in post-production for over a year. Editing was very challenging given the linguistic nature of the film and the different formats of the film (film v. video). I had to depend on the help and judgment of many friends who speak the languages in the film when I was cutting. Conceptually, it was very challenging when the film was still unsubtitled because I was never able to show the film to anyone who understood more than three of the six languages in the film.