Green Card by Bruce and Norman Yonemoto

Tickets Green Card: An American Romance, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto 1982 77 Minutes Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. Green Card: An American Romance is the third and final installment in the Yonemotos’ Soap Opera Series, following Based on Romance (1979) and An Impotent Metaphor (1979). Satirizing 1980s Los Angeles and the city’s burgeoning art scene, Green Card betrays the Yonemotos’ fascination with the melodramatic clichés of American soap operas and the films of Douglas Sirk, drawing on the vernacular of Southern California’s entertainment industry. The video tells the story of Sumie Nobuhara, a Japanese artist studying in the US, who must pursue a green card marriage with an American surfer/filmmaker in order to secure her path to an artistic career, instead of returning home to a conventional domestic life in Japan. Examining an immigrant experience lived directly in the shadow of Hollywood, Green Card explores the mass media’s construction of cultural identity and ideals of romantic love. Using non-actors, the video revels in the absurdity of making work at the crossroads of everyday life in Los Angeles and the mythic dreams produced in the city’s studios. As Sumie says, “The way we see family, friends, relationships —even love—is mass media propaganda.” Add to calendar Google Calendar iCalendar Outlook 365 Outlook Live