Robert Akira Nakamura (born July 5, 1936, Venice, California[1]) is a filmmaker and teacher, sometimes referred to as "the Godfather of Asian American media.
"[2][3] In 1970 he cofounded Visual Communications (VC) the oldest community-based Asian Pacific American media arts organization in the United States.
He left a successful career in photojournalism and advertising photography to become one of the first to explore, interpret and present the experiences of Japanese Americans in film.
Nakamura's personal documentary Manzanar (1972) revisited childhood memories of incarceration in an American concentration camp during World War II and has been selected for major retrospectives on the documentary form at the San Francisco Museum of Art and Film Forum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Also that year he created (with Ishizuka) the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center at the Japanese American National Museum.