Alum Steven Okazaki Pays Tribute to Actor Toshiro Mifune in New Documentary

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Now 64, Okazaki is coming full circle from decades earlier when his mother, a supermarket worker, took him to samurai films at Japanese studio Toho’s L.A. theatre. Since then, Okazaki has forged his own successful movie career. After attending San Francisco State film school, he moved to Berkeley and began making documentaries and independent films. His 1987 San Francisco-shot indie “Living on Tokyo Time” premiered at Sundance and had a successful, albeit small, art house release. He often made documentaries about the Japanese American experience, winning an Academy Award for his short “Days of Waiting: The Life and Art of Estelle Ishigo” (1990), and an Emmy in 2008 for the HBO documentary “White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (The latter is part of a two-decade relationship with HBO, which includes last year’s documentary “Heroin: Cape Cod, U.S.A.”).