The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Virtual Screening Room will stream “Gold Watch,” an episode of the PBS dramatic anthology series Visions, on Thursday, September 2nd at 7PM ET/4PM PT. The episode starred Shizuko Hoshi and Mako. It originally aired on November 11th, 1976.
Here’s the description:
Momoko Iko’s acclaimed “Gold Watch” represents one of the first dramas to realistically examine the trauma caused by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 of February 19, 1942, which led to the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, and legal immigrants from Japan, during World War II. Informed by her own experience of being incarcerated at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming at age two, Iko’s semi-autobiographical play dramatizes the plight of a hard-working Japanese American/immigrant family living in the Pacific Northwest that struggles to come to terms with the unjust and unwarranted government order that will strip them of their freedom and property simply because of their racial identity. The devastating play serves to both document the racism endured by Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during the war and illuminate the immeasurable toll of the still-present psychological pressures imposed on people of color in the United States by an American society that often demands cultural subjugation. Produced by television pioneer Barbara Schultz and directed by African American theater legend Lloyd Richards (recipient of the National Medal of Arts Lifetime Achievement Award), Iko’s groundbreaking drama is further elevated by transcendent lead performances from the married acting couple of Shizuko Hoshi and Mako (Academy Award nominee for The Sand Pebbles).
Produced by PBS station KCET, Visions ran for four brief seasons between 1976 and 1980.
A panel discussion will follow the screening.
Registration is required but free. You can register here.
