The seventh annual Asian American Showcase, presented by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media and the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, runs Friday, April 5, through Sunday, April 14. Screenings will be at the Film Center, 164 N. State. Tickets are $8, $4 for Film Center members; for more information call 312-846-2600. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
Better Luck Tomorrow
Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place
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Our contemporary political struggle over gay marriage supplies the framework for this engrossing 2001 documentary about the acceptance of homosexuality in native Hawaiian culture. Directors Kathryn Xian and Brent Anbe piece together interviews with historians and gay and trans activists to show that the Hawaiians’ communal society included neither the nuclear family nor European sexual morality. In the 19th century tribal chieftains adopted Western law, a failed attempt to protect the country from colonization, but before that most children were raised in extended families and many chiefs had male lovers; the Hawaiian word for gay sex also means “safe sex,” because it precludes conception. 67 min. (FC) On the same program, which runs about 88 minutes, S. Leo Chiang’s Safe Journey (2000) and Punam Sawhney’s The Goddess Method (2001). (6:00)
Many of these shorts by young Asian-Americans bear the fingerprints of Wong Kar-wai (handheld camera, swish pans, alternating color with black and white) and John Woo by way of Quentin Tarantino (macho vulnerability, choreographed action). Cary Lin’s Ginseng Dreams (2000) consists mostly of sleek, hypnotic visuals in which brooding gangsters strike poses, the laconic dialogue and rock ballads on the sound track adding to the MTV feel. Roy Lee’s genre exercise Bad Guys (2001), about three bumbling punks who botch a kidnapping while aping their pop-culture heroes, is interesting to look at but tanks whenever the characters open their mouths. The standout is Victor Vu’s powerful Instant Karma (2001), about a young Vietnamese woman who spies her mother having an affair and reveals her knowledge to her elderly father and to the adulterous couple, with devastating consequences. On the same program, films and videos by Michael Idemoto, Richard Kim, and Jay Lee. 98 min. (TS) (8:15)
Linda Ohama’s fascinating 2001 video documentary constructs a layered narrative about her centenarian grandmother, who left a privileged upbringing in Hiroshima to move to British Columbia in 1928. Asayo came to Canada as a picture bride but rejected her betrothed and married another man; her story touches on the plight of Japanese-Canadians during World War II, the incineration of her hometown, the fissures that crept into her marriage, and her work in the 70s and 80s cultivating a lavish garden that has since been named a historic site. During the shooting Ohama and the family discovered that her grandmother had left behind a husband and two daughters in Hiroshima (possibly out of shame for not having produced a son), and the video builds a considerable amount of suspense over their fate while poetically connecting images from the past and present. In English and subtitled Japanese. 95 min. (TS) (2:00)
- Lunch With Charles
