EAST COAST PREMIERE

Manzanar, in California’s dry, windblown Owens Valley, was once “the place where water always flows”: Native Americans called its creeks and lush lands home for thousands of years until the 1860s, when the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone were forced from the area to reservations. The water the valley depended on was then systematically extracted to support the lawns, fountains, and ever-growing population of Los Angeles. Manzanar was already desolate in 1942, when the U.S. Government selected it as the site for one of the infamous concentration camps to which West Coast Japanese Americans were sent during World War II. Manzanar Diverted brings together these three stories to chronicle Manzanar’s deep history of forced removal—removal from, removal to. Ann Kaneko’s film shows descendants of incarcerated Japanese Americans, Paiute-Shoshone activists, and local ranchers partnering over the issues of social and environmental justice that tie them together.—Judy Bloch