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SHORTS PROGRAM
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YAI NIN | Trailer from Champ Ensminger on Vimeo. |
YAI NIN
Directed by Champ Ensminger 13 mins | Documentary | USA | Thai | New England Premiere Ninlawan Pinyo is the matriarch of a Thai American family, who hustled for her fortune by founding a naem (pork sausage) factory in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Director's Bio: Champ Ensminger is a Thai American filmmaker born in Chiang Mai and raised in Spokane, Washington. After graduating from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in comparative literature and anthropology, he moved to New York City, where he worked at the video hosting site Vimeo and then as a freelancer and production assistant at the web agency m ss ng p eces. He returned to Chiang Mai in 2013, where he spent time as a volunteer and workshop instructor at Documentary Arts Asia, a nonprofit aimed at bringing agency and exposure to Asia-based media artists. Ensminger recently earned the Emerging Artist Fellowship at the Jacob Burns Film Center. He is currently part of the production team at World Famous in Seattle, creating content for brands like T-Mobile, Microsoft, and Amazon. |
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Chicken
Directed by Emma Li 5 mins | Animation/Documentary| USA | English This film was produced and animated at a Boston university (Harvard). A mother and father tell a true story of kindness, cruelty, and a chicken. |
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Moʻo! Trailer 2019 from Anela Ling on Vimeo. |
Mo'o!
Directed by Anela Ling 17 mins | Drama/Comedy | USA | English Two grieving cousins navigate O'ahu's haunted terrain in search of life - before and after. Director's Bio: Anela Ling is a filmmaker and artist born and raised on the island of O‘ahu. Anela has worked on a wide array of independent films at all levels of production responsibility. After winning both the Judge’s and PIC Award at the 2018 ‘Ohina Fellowship Lab, she was granted the rare opportunity of being mentored by showrunner/writer, Dana Ledoux Miller (The Newsroom, Narcos.) With the support of her community and a passion to create personal and affecting films, Anela works to broadcast stories in the hopes that viewers find a bit of understanding, truth, and comfort in them. Her most recent work was as lead Producer on Alexander Bocchieri’s dramatic short film, The Pit Where We Were Born, and Production Designer on Alika Maikau’s and Jonah Okano’s Kaneohe-centric film Mauka to Makai (‘Ohina Fellowship award & HIFF 2018 Best Made in Hawai‘i Short winner.) Anela’s commitment to nurturing the growing and diverse independent film community in Hawai‘i has led to many collaborations with a wide network of peers. She works now as an upcoming Writer/Director on her own film, "Mo‘o!", as seen here. She is beyond ecstatic to work with a crew of her friends and peers. |
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Felt Love
Directed by Angeline Vu + Arlene Bongco 7 mins | Animation | Family | USA | English A young boy learns to understand the depth of his mother's love despite the distance her dedication may create. Director's Bio: Angeline Vu is a recent San Jose State University graduate with a BFA in Animation/Illustration. From a young age, she loved to read stories about family, fantasy, and fairy tales. She draws inspiration from her relationship with her family (especially her mom), her three cats, and her jungle of a backyard. Arlene Bongco is a recent San Jose State University graduate with a BFA in Animation/Illustration. Heartwarming narratives and handmade crafts inspire her work. From here she is interested in exploring different opportunities and roles within the animation industry. |
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Keep in Touch
Directed by Memie Osuga 7 mins | Animation | USA | English Min and Lillian are best friends...but the only place they've ever met is in the online world of the fantasy novel they're writing together over the internet. Concept, Direction, Animation, Music: Memie Osuga Faculty Advisor: Jie Li Completed in tandem with a Harvard Senior Thesis in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies April 2020 |
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Waves
Directed by Jane Hae Kim 13 mins | Drama | USA | English Jamie, a hesitant Korean American woman, visits home for the holidays. She hopes to catch up and make some sort of connection with her family but instead, like in the past, feels isolated and alone. Through the experience of feeling like the black sheep once again, she looks to different forms of water as a means of comfort and re-connection. Director's Bio: Jane Hae Kim, is a Korean American multi-hyphenate artist living in LA. She was born and raised in Queens, New York. Due to her lack of focus as a child, and tendency for rebellion her parents quickly realized that the usual path of business, engineering or science would not be her forte. She found Art at a very young age. Animation in particular communicated so much to her, with the exaggerated gestures that these characters would use in order to express themselves. She came out to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California after graduating Highschool and embarked on a journey of unexpected self discovery and expansion. Through that expansion she found singing and then acting, and soon after began her career as an actor. Jane Hae Kim’s acting credits include the TV series ‘Picard,’ the VR Game ‘Redway Manor’, and various other independent films and web series. Theatre credits include ensemble casting for, ‘The Women of 4G’ by Amy Tofte, a Nicholl Fellowship winner. And Lead casting in the Rock Goth Drama ‘sSISTERSs’ by queer feminist playwright and director Gina Young. Jane’s focus in her art has to do with figures in vulnerable settings. And to show how even in very intimate places we wish to hide and cover. The desire to voice other people’s experiences in order to expand the horizon of consciousness of what it means to be a human was profound within her. She found that writing and making her own film were a natural addition to continuing with that purpose. ‘WAVES’ is her debut film. |
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Awaken
Directed by Leena Pendharkar 13 mins | Drama | USA | English Awaken is a short film about RAKHI SINGH, who has recently put her mom, UMA SINGH, into a “care center” after exploring other options for her Alzheimers Disease. Rakhi’s mom isn’t taking well to it, and still has long spells of crying, and bouts of confusion. Rakhi brings her mom home in hopes of comforting her, helping her reset, and to find her way, only to learn that it’s not only unhelpful, but also breaking her family apart. Rakhi is at a loss as to what to do, but when her mother disappears, she finds her lost in a moment from the past, paving the way for a solution. It’s not an easy one, but it’s something. Director's Bio: Leena Pendharkar is an award-winning writer and director. She premiered her sophomore feature film, "20 Weeks", at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It played in festivals all over the country, won the Best Feature Film Award at the Maryland Film Festival, the Best Editing Award at the Tallgrass Film Festival, was selected as one of the best independent films of 2017 by Film Threat, and was described as an “intimate, compassionate take on abortion” by the Los Angeles Times. |
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Tri and Khanh
Directed by Daphne Xu 4 mins | Documentary | USA | English/Vietnamese Tri, a Vietnamese-American man, converses with his father, Khanh, who has been diagnosed with cancer. Shot on 16mm with in-camera editing, this roll of film captures one of Tri's visits to Khanh's house in Hull, Massachusetts. Director's Bio: Daphne Xu is an artist and filmmaker exploring the politics and poetics of place. Her creative practice engages observations of the everyday and of contested landscapes. |
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Ahma and Alan
Directed by James Y. Shih 23 mins | Drama/Comedy | USA | English Ahma & Alan is a comedic/dramatic short film about a Taiwanese grandma (ahma) that has to travel from a rural town in central Taiwan to the capital city of Taipei in the north to pull Alan, her American-born grandson, out of jail before he gets deported by a vindictive police officer. Director's Bio: James Y. Shih is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and grew up in Milpitas, CA in the San Francisco Bay Area. James has studied at UC San Diego (Economics B.A., Theatre minor), De Anza College and City College of San Francisco (Film Production), National Taiwan Normal University (Mandarin), and at Cal State Northridge where he received his MFA in Screenwriting. James is the producer of acclaimed feature films “Fight Life” (2012) the MMA documentary and the Sundance award winning sci-fi film “Advantageous” (2015) currently on Neftlix. James is passionate about filmmaking and telling personal, Asian American stories such as “Ahma & Alan" which he wrote and directed. |
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FUGETSU-DO trailer from Kaia Rose on Vimeo. |
Fugetsu-Do
Directed by Kaia Rose "We had to live the American Dream twice." Fugetsu-Do is more than a little candy store; since 1903 it has been an anchor for the Japanese-American community in Little Tokyo, centered at the heart of Downtown LA. At over 115 years old, this family-run business is one of the oldest in Los Angeles and its history is emblematic of the immigrant experience in America. It hasn’t been easy and yet, as its owner Brian Kito says, “the shop itself has an overwhelming desire to exist - it wants to survive.” The ingredients of the brightly-colored pieces of mochi-gashi that line Fugetsu-Do's wood-paneled cases include so much more than rice flour and sweet bean paste. Mixed inside are stories of joy and pain, tradition and racism, legacy and loss. Survival is never easy; it’s complicated and messy, full of contradictions and surprises. In the three generations that the Kito Family has been running Fugetsu-Do, the store has become a memory bank for the community and the stories the line its walls could not be more relevant in today's America. Director's Bio: Kaia Rose is a director and producer best known for Climate Countdown, an award-winning webseries that maps out the ecology of climate solutions. As a freelance filmmaker, Kaia has filmed and edited videos for such organizations as the United Nations, The Juilliard School, 350.org, and the World Bank. She has edited numerous independent short narrative and documentary films and was an editor and archive manager on the PBS documentary "Power to Heal", exploring how Medicare helped desegregate American hospitals in the 1960s. For many years she was the lead producer and studio manager at the BAFTA-winning production company ArthurCox in the UK, where she produced animated commercials, shorts, TV shows and feature films for such companies as Disney Jr, Aardman Animations, the BBC, the UK Film Council and 20th Century Fox TV. Kaia is a graduate of the University of Bristol and currently the Multimedia Content Lead at Connect4Climate, World Bank Group. For more, visit kaiarose.com. |
