Warning Shot
2016, 9:50 minutes

single-channel digital video with sound

One death. Three versions of the crime. James Wakasa was shot by military police at Topaz WWII incarceration camp. Was it justifiable homicide, an accidental fatality, or second-degree murder? This film uses the “Rashomon effect” to juxtapose conflicting accounts of this gay chef’s untimely demise. This speculative film uses the “Rashomon effect” to juxtapose conflicting accounts of this chef’s untimely demise.

Exhibitions
We Live! Memories of Resistance, OXY Arts Gallery, 2020;

Resisting Incarceration Culture, Oliver Arts Center, 2019;
Artist’s Eyes, Art of Incarceration, MIS Historic Learning Center Gallery, 2017;

Screenings
Treize Galerie, Paris, 2023;

10th Films of Remembrance, retrospective festival, 2021;
Alphawood Gallery, Chicago, 2017;
Frameline 41: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, 2017;
MIX NYC: 29th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival, 2017;
Films of Remembrance, San Francisco, 2016;
CAAMFest 34, San Jose, 2016;
12th Queer Women of Color Film Festival, San Francisco, 2016;
Outtakes Two, San Francisco, (work-in-progress screening), 2015 ;

Press / Publications
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), 105-114;

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

Artists’ Eyes: Art of Incarceration, (National Japanese American Historical Society 2017) exhibition catalog;

Jan Christian Bernabe and Laura Kina, “Muscles, Mash Ups and Warning Shots–Queering Japanese American History: An Interview with Tina Takemoto,” Queering Contemporary Asian American Art, ed. Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017), 220-226;

Eureka at Thirty Years: Fleishhacker Foundation Artist Fellowships, foreword by Christian L. Frock, (2017) catalog;