Education
Tajima-Peña attended John Muir High School in Altadena, California, and later received her bachelor"s degree cum laude from Harvard University"s Radcliffe College where she majored in East Asian Studies and sociology.
Tajima-Peña attended John Muir High School in Altadena, California, and later received her bachelor"s degree cum laude from Harvard University"s Radcliffe College where she majored in East Asian Studies and sociology.
While at Harvard, she was chairperson of the United Front Against Apartheid. Tajima-Peña has been deeply involved in the Asian American independent film community as an activist, writer and filmmaker. She was a film critic for The Village Voice, a cultural commentator for National Public Radio, and the editor of Bridge: Asian American Perspectives.
Tajima-Peña previously served as the Graduate Director of the Masters Program in Social Documentation as Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Her current works are a documentary and a transmedia project Number Mas Bebes, which premieres at the 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival, is a documentary about the sterilization of Mexican-origin women at Los Angeles County- University of Southern California Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s.
Tajima-Pena"s transmedia project is an interactive history documentary, Heart Mountain 3.0, using the Minecraft video game.
Her honors include an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Alpert Award for Film/Video, the James Wong Howe “Jimmie” Award, the Justice in Action Award, and two International Documentary Association Achievement (one shared), the Media Achievement Award from MANAA, the Steve Tatsukawa Memorial Award and the Oracle Application Express Excellence in the Arts Award. She has twice earned Fellowships in Documentary Film from both the Rockefeller Foundation and the New York Foundation on the Arts. Her films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, London Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films Festival, Redcat, San Francisco International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, Toronto International Film Festival, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. Her documentaries have been broadcast around the world, including British Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Company Canada, Business School Australia, Tokyo Broadcasting System, VPRO Netherlands, ZDF Germany, American Broadcasting Company, Home Box Office, Oxygen, Lifetime Television, the Sundance Channel, and Public Broadcasting Service. In 2009 she won a Fellow Award from United States Artists.
She was the first paid director at Asian Cine-Vision in New York and a founding member of the Center for Asian American Media (formerly National Asian American Telecommunications Association).
