I’m doing a first on this site, and that is talking about documentaries that I saw at the Boston Asian American Film Festival last weekend. My reviews will be brief, but I will say that both of them need to be seen.
In my new home of the Boston area, one event that basically shook the world was the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. The bombing was perpetrated by two Chechen brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar (I might have spelled this wrong and I honestly don’t care) Tsarnaev. Tamerlan died in a shootout with the police later on and Dzhokhar has been apprehended and, in the big news from earlier this year, has been sentenced to death. You know you’re in Boston when people care more about Tom Brady’s suspension for cheating that led to the Patriots winning the Super Bowl than a convicted terrorist’s sentencing.
In a time period coincidental to the bombing, Brown University student Sunil Tripathi seemingly disappeared. His family, recognizing the advances of technology, took to Facebook and launched a social media campaign to help find Sunil. However, it didn’t take long for the Internet to decide that Sunil Tripathi was also the Boston Marathon bomber.
The main reason I believe this movie is important is because it addresses two topics that are a lot like Asian-on-Asian racism, in that they are things that people know are problems, but at the same time would prefer not talking about. These topics are the issue of mental health and the dangers that lie with the Internet with the rise of social media.
As an Indian-American, like Sunil, I know there is a lot of stigma associated with basically being anything out of the ordinary. My Indian colleague told me...READ MORE