• Director: Rea Tajiri
  • Country: United States
  • Year: 2022

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In this moving and original reflection on mortality and transformation, Rea Tajiri partners with her mother, Rose Tajiri Noda, to document the final sixteen years of Rose’s life. Tajiri shows us how to enter the world of a person living with dementia in order to connect through listening, art, and music. Rose performs songs from her era providing the soundtrack for time travel as we witness her evolution across nine decades of living. A delicate weave between past and present, parenting and being parented, Wisdom Gone Wild reflects on the reliability of memory and the desire to reinvent one’s own life when memories fail us. It is a poignant meditation on mothers and daughters and the abiding strength of the unique relationship between them.

This film will be available to stream until midnight on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. To play the film, click on the play button that appears at the center of the image above.

Rose Tajiri inside assisted living, Los Angeles, 2012; photo by Rea Tajiri
Rose Tajiri inside art installation gazing into camera, photo by Christian Bruno
Rose Tajiri inside art installation @LACMA, 2014. photo by Christian Bruno
Rose Tajiri inside art installation @ LACMA, photo by Christian Bruno
Filmmaker Rea Tajiri with mother Rose singing inside art installation @ LACMA, 2014; photo by Christian Bruno
Rose Tajiri in Los Angeles, Assisted Living, photo by Rea Tajiri
Director Rea Tajiri with mother Rose, in assisted living garden, 2012. photo by Rea Tajiri
Family Tajiri in 1973, Cactus Garden photo by Vince Tajiri
Brion, Rose, Rea Tajiri in Rome, 1973, photo by Vince Tajiri

Left: Rose & Rea, 1972; Right: Rose & sister Betty, 1930’s; photo left by Vince Tajiri; photo right by unknown photographer

Director Rea Tajiri with mother Rose, Los Angeles, 2014, photo by Christian Bruno
Director Rea Tajiri with her mother Rose inside assisted living, 2012, photo by Oscar Molina
Director Rea Tajiri with her mother Rose, in hospice, Los Angeles, photo by Rea Tajiri
Director Rea Tajiri and Rose Tajiri, Los Angeles, photo by Christian Bruno
Rose Tajiri, falls asleep inside beauty shop at assisted living, 2014

Rea Tajiri is an award-winning documentary Director/Producer and 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Film and Video. Tajiri’s work situates itself in poetic, non-traditional storytelling forms to encourage dialog and reflection around buried histories. Tajiri has directed three documentary features including WISDOM GONE WILD (2022) which had a national broadcast on the PBS docu series POV, Season 36; screened at the DOC NYC Film Festival and in International Competition at IDFA. To date, the film has won seven awards including the Audience Award at Blackstar for Best Documentary and Honorable Mention for Best Documentary Feature; it also won the Grand Prix at the San Diego Asian American Film Festival in 2022.