Whose Dream? Which Cut?, a self-reflective, satiric, personal documentary, follows Kawai’s attempt to convince her mother to become a labor activist. She traces labor alliances between Japanese and Mexican workers, interviewing different labor activists and ultimately concluding that her and her mother can have different perspectives on the world. This documentary has traveled in a national tour, won awards and screened at the National Museum for Women Artists in Washington, DC.

18 Mile Beach reflects on the filmmaker’s mother-daughter relationship in China and the United States. Hsuczyk explores her Chinese heritage based on her own experiences and on the experiences of her mother, a Chinese immigrant. The footage was shot in 1968 in China by her grandfather before the family moved to America, and the narration is from recent interviews Hsuczyk conducted with her mother. 18 Mile Beach won Best Experimental Film in the Five College Film Festival in 2013.

Masami Kawai, born and raised in Los Angeles, is a filmmaker and activist. She participated in Film Independent’s diversity program, Project Involve, and was a selected director in the Francis Ford Coppola One-Act play series. She is currently working on a documentary about her father, who was a Los Angeles based artist from the Pacific island of Amami and was part of the L.A. minimalist movement. She is also developing a feature script about high-school graffiti writers set against the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. She received her MFA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television and BA from Hampshire College.