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SHORTS PROGRAM
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The Stranger
Directed by Chen Yang 15 mins | Drama | USA | Chinese | World Premiere Anna, a young tour guide, brings yet another group of visiting Chinese tourists to outlet malls. An interaction with one of the teen tourists leads her to question whether staying in the United States instead of returning home to China after college graduation was the right choice for her, and her future. Director's Bio: Chen Yang is a New York-based filmmaker. During her school years, Chen has written and directed several short films. Influenced by French and Italian filmmakers, she believes in realism and focuses on universal topics of human nature in her films. The uniqueness and diversity of New York City have also given her a new perspective of the films that she wants to make. Currently working on a feature-length script about her hometown, she hopes that her films can be the window for the world to see the real China and the authentic lives of Chinese people, an element which is underrepresented in today's world cinema. |
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Detourning Asia/America with Valerie Soe
Directed by Mila Zuo 14 mins | Documentary | USA | Chinese This visual essay explores video/filmworks by Asian/American feminist filmmaker Valerie Soe through the concept of 'détournement" proposed by Guy Debord and the Situationists as an aesthetics of appropriation, reuse, and remix. The San Diego Asian Film Festival says, "Eavesdrop on this snappy video chat between artists Valerie Soe and Mila Zuo as they discuss radical appropriations of popular culture and subversion, while visual firecrackers explode all around." Director's Bio: Mila Zuo is an assistant professor in the Department of Theater and FIlm at UBC. Her research interests include contemporary Asian and transnational cinemas, film philosophy, acting and performance studies, star studies, digital and new media, and critical theories of gender, sexuality, and race and ethnicity. |
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Passage
Directed by Asavari Kumar 5 mins | Animation/Drama | USA | English Finding herself in a state of limbo, an Indian woman revisits her immigration journey and voyages through a tempestuous emotional landscape of memory, identity, belonging and the illusion of the American Dream. Director's Bio: Asavari Kumar is an Animation Director from New Delhi, India currently based in Los Angeles. She owns and operates the collective - Supernova Design - through which she creates commercial and personal projects while collaborating with POC and women artists. Her clients lits includes - Google, Youtube, Slack & Disney amongst others. |
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Providence
Directed by Daniel Lee 10 mins | Documentary | Korea | English/Korean | East Coast Premiere Providence is an experimental documentary film that explores class struggle, national identity, and the trauma that follows through the lens of a family in South Korea. Following a family on its way to visit a father in prison, the film jumps in between periods of time and recounts a troubled history that seeps into the present. Director's Bio: Daniel Lee is a writer and filmmaker from South Korea. Lee began filmmaking at NYU Abu Dhabi. His films incorporate documentary, fiction, and a wide range of media. Lee presented his experimental short, "How You Abandoned Your Cat", at the 2019 Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Short. |
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Deeper I Go
Directed by Michael P. Vidler 15 mins | Drama | Canada | English The profound loss of a loved one drives a man to desperation. Content warning - blood, needles, suicide. Director's Bio: Michael P. Vidler is an independent director whose innovative work has been repeatedly recognized across mediums. His most recent short film was produced as part of the highly competitive Crazy8s and has gone on to have a successful festival run at VIFF, Foyle Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival and many more. An earlier production, the psychological thriller "Mine," was selected as Best International Short at the Williamsburg Film Festival in 2015 and is currently featured on Direct TV and Amazon Prime. Michael is currently working on a full length production planned for 2021. |
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Dirty Business
Directed by Yutao Chen 12 mins | Documentary | USA/Vietnam | English/Vietnamese | New England Premiere Most of us don't think much about recycling. We rinse our yogurt containers, crush our milk cartons, and break down our boxes. But once our trash hits the curb in a blue or a brown or a green bin, we forget about it. Welcome to Minh Khai, Vietnam - where plastic from all over the world finds a new life. This film documents the experiences of Minh Khai's residents as they wrestle with the blessings and curses of an empire built on our trash. |
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Growing Pains
Directed by LIN, Po-Yu 25 mins | Family | Taiwan | Chinese | North American Premiere "Growing Pains" is a film based on a true story from the director's past. Fourteen-year-old Yao is sick of his worn-out shoes, which his father never replaces for being too deep in debt. One day, after a confrontation with debt collectors, his father suddenly buys him a pair of expensive sneakers. Little did Yao know, this is the start of a painful tragedy. Director's Bio: Lin Po-Yu is a freelance filmmaker born in 1990, Taipei, Taiwan, with a master's degree from the Department of Motion Picture of National Taiwan University of Arts. He has written and directed a number of shorts commercials. He is especially good at capturing realism in his works, with most of them inspired by everyday life, his films are described as natural, pure, restrained, and gentle. |
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The Hole (2019) Trailer from Will Kim on Vimeo. |
The Hole
Directed by Will Kim 4 mins | Animation | USA "The Hole" is about a mother bird with a big hole in her heart, on a journey of searching for her baby son that fails to fly and accidentally falls into a hole. With an original soundtrack by Green Seo, Will Kim uses watercolor animation technique to reflect on her personal and universal experience of tragedy and despair. Director's Bio: Will Kim is a Los Angeles based artist and filmmaker. Will currently teaches animation at Riverside City College where he directs Riverside City College Animation Showcase. Kim's work has showed in over 100 international film/animation festivals and auditoriums including Directors' Guild of America (DGA) Theater, Regal Cinemas, Academy of TV Arts and Sciences Theater, The Getty Center, Centre Pompidou Web Series, The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative, and the Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego. |
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Atomic Café
Directed by Akira Boch, Tadashi Nakamura 10 mins | Documentary | USA | English In the late 1970's, when L.A.'s punk rock scene was exploding, an unlikely family-owned restaurant in Little Tokyo started by Japanese Americans returning from America's WWII concentration camps, become one of its most popular hang-outs. That's when Sansei "Atomic Nancy" with her "take-no-prisoners" punk make-up and demeanor took the café over from her parents and cranked up the jukebox. Infamous for its eclectic clientele - from Japanese American locals and kids from East L.A. to yakuza and the biggest rock stars of the day - the Atomic Café became an important part of L.A.'s punk rock history. |
