On the Line
2018, 6:45 minutes
single-channel digital video with sound
hand-processed 8mm/16mm film, paint, digital video

Inspired by prewar cannery workers in San Diego, On the Line offers a queer meditation on the Japanese American women who cleaned the tuna, worked the assembly line, and found same-sex intimacy amid sake and fish guts while the men were off to sea.

Screenings
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Le Grand Action, Paris, 2023;
Treize Galerie, Paris, 2023;
Paris College of Art, 2023;
Marseille Underground Film & Music Festival, 2023;
Other Cinema, San Francisco, 2023;
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, 2022;
Festival of (In)Appropriation, Los Angeles Film Forum, 2022
Marcus Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, 2022;
Cinéastes Indépendantes, Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal, 2020;
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) London, 2019;
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival, London, 2019;
Antimatter International Media Art & Experimental Film Festival, Victoria BC, 2019;
Festival des Cinémas Différents de Paris, 2019;
Art Gallery of Hamilton Film Festival, 2019;
Chicago Underground Film Festival, 2019;
Xposed International Queer Film Festival, Berlin, 2019;
BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival, 2019;
Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2019;
Tuesday Night Cafe, Los Angeles, 2018;
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, 2018;
CAAMFest 36, San Francisco, 2018;

Exhibitions
de Young Open, de Young Museum, 2020;
Present Tense: Task of Remembrance, Chinese Culture Center 2019;
Precarious Lives, SOMArts, 2019;
Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS, 2018;

Press / Publications
J.L. Odom, “Asian Art Museum’s Virtual ‘Queer Pasts and Futures’ to Showcase Two SF Artists’ LGBTQ-centering Experimental Films,” Local News Matters (July 26, 2022), republished in SFGate (July 28, 2022

Present Tense: Task of Remembrance, (Chinese Culture Center, 2020), exhibition catalog

Tina Takemoto, “Queer Exhaustion, Speculation, Despair,” Saturation: Racial Matter, Institutional Limits, and the Excesses of Representation, ed. C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp, (MIT Press 2020)

Sean Au, “Present Tense 2019: Task of Remembrance,” Interview with curator Hoi Leung, KTSF (May 22, 2019)

Joey Orr and Imani Wadud, “Social Histories: An Inquiry from the Integrated Arts Research Initiative,” Art Journal Open (April 18, 2019)

Juliet Jacques, “Artists’ Films at BFI Flare Festival: ‘In Place of the Real’ Focused on Histories of LGBTQI+ People,” Frieze, (April 9, 2019)

“Flare 2019: Lift Little Tokyo, On the Line, Wayward Emulsions, Sworded Love by Tina Takemoto,” interview, Rianne Pictures.com (March 26, 2019)