Filmmaker Eugene Park awarded special $160k grant

Local filmmaker Eugene Sun Park was one of 20 recipients to receive a grant from the National Park Services’ Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, which supports a range of projects that preserve and interpret the WWII confinement sites of Japanese Americans.

Park, of nonprofit Full Spectrum Features, will use his $160,000 grant to produce “The Orange Story: A Cinematic Digital History Project.”

It includes production of “The Orange Story,” a 20-minute narrative film that dramatizes a key moment of the Japanese American incarceration experience, the so-called “day of removal,” along with an educational website, outreach program and distribution. Asian CineVision in New York is the project’s fiscal sponsor.

“The Orange Story” production team consists of producer Eugene Sun Park; director Erika Street; EP Jason Matsumoto and associate producer Aren Zolninger.

Sun Park is an award-winning experimental and narrative film producer whose work has screened in numerous film festivals.

The film is scheduled to shoot in various locations in Chicago and California and plans a spring, 2016 release.