Bridging Communities Events

Chef Akira and the Hirose family, Azay Restaurant

Azay is the homecoming of Chef Akira and the Hirose family in Little Tokyo. After an apprenticeship and six years in the countryside town of Azay-le-Rideau, France with the Jacquet family, Chef Akira worked at renowned restaurants in Paris and Los Angeles. In the kitchen of L’Orangerie off La Cienega, he met his wife Jo Ann, who has worked in Little Tokyo as a dental hygienist for the past 30 years. They owned and operated Maison Akira in Pasadena from 1998 to 2019, where the restaurant flourished with the support of the Japanese American community. 

 With Jo Ann’s family’s roots in the Little Tokyo community via Anzen Hotel Supply (and now Anzen Hardware), the family continued with its next chapter in Little Tokyo, opening Azay in September 2019 with the involvement of his son Philip. The multi-generational family restaurant celebrates and champions the perspectives of everyone involved—Chef Akira, his family, the staff, and their broader community. All these relationships to history, cuisine, identity and culture inform their commitment to discovering how a family restaurant can practice hospitality with compassion and passion for everyone.

Nausheen Dadabhoy, Director & Cinematographer

THE GROUND BENEATH THEIR FEET (2014) — her directorial debut following two Pakistani women who were paralyzed after an earthquake — premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in the first appearance competition. Her second feature film, AN ACT OF WORSHIP (2022), is a counter narrative of the last 30 years of Muslim life in America. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and had a national broadcast on PBS’ POV. AN ACT OF WORSHIP was made with the support of the Ford Foundation, the Sundance Institute, the Open Society Foundation, Hot Docs, the International Documentary Association, among others. 

The community engagement campaign, which was central to the creation of AN ACT OF WORSHIP, focused on the importance of building a community archive, healing through storytelling and recounting the Muslim American story through the lens of joy rather than trauma.

As a cinematographer Nausheen’s credits include LA FEMME ET LE TGV (2016), a live action short film Oscar nominee, Emmy winning ARMED WITH FAITH (2018), Emmy nominated NOT DONE: WOMEN REMAKING AMERICA (2020), and SXSW jury award winner ANOTHER BODY (2023). Nausheen’s films have screened at festivals worldwide including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, AFI Fest, Locarno Film Festival and have appeared on Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Disney+.

Nausheen has been a Film Independent Project:Involve Fellow (2011), a Berlin Talents participant (2017), a Firelight Fellow (2018), a Chicken & Egg Eggcelerator Lab Fellow (2019), a newportFILM Documentary Cinematography Fellow (2019), and Pillars Artist Fellow (2022). She was part of DOCNYC’s inaugural “40 Under 40” which features the talented and diverse voices in documentary filmmaking today.

In addition to her work as a filmmaker Nausheen also works as an educator. She was a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a visiting faculty member at Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology in Karachi, Pakistan. She has conducted workshops at SUNY Purchase, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Claremont McKenna College, and Bard College. She’s been a cinematography mentor for Re-Present Media and Chicken & Egg Pictures. Most recently she co-led a cinematography workshop in The Gambia for American Film Showcase.

Nausheen is currently developing an iTVS funded short documentary about how Muslim American children learn about sex. She is based in New York, Los Angeles and Karachi, Pakistan. She received her MFA in Cinematography from the American Film Institute Conservatory.