Filipino Americans: Discovering Their Past For the Future

Although this well-intentioned program has the look and feel of a PBS documentary (interviews with historians, tons of old photographs, voice-over readings of personal accounts, and inspiring music), Filipino Americans: Discovering Their Past for the Future offers more style than substance. Using a roughly chronological timeline, the story traces the arrival of Filipinos to Hawaii and the California coast some 400 years ago, looks at the history of a Filipino settlement in Louisiana, and examines the impact of Filipino labor on both the Alaskan fishing trade and California's agricultural development. For awhile, short voice-over snippets of immigrant's experiences are interspersed throughout the interviews, but they're eventually abandoned, an oddity that underscores the overall lack of focus in the film. Too, the filmmakers did not listen closely to what the historians are saying--some of the comments go beyond the simple rose-colored-glasses observations of in vogue multiculturalism. For instance, one historian, after remarking that throughout our history Filipinos have "cleaned, cooked, and harvested for America," inexplicably adds "that's how America survived." We can and should celebrate the contributions and achievements of all ethnic groups in America, but to attribute the survival of the country to a group that accounts for .6% of the population (in 1990) is simply ludicrous. Although offering some interesting stories and some good commentary, a better organized film with less on-the-spot revisionism would have been more welcome. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)