The sixth 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, continues Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21. Screenings will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $7, $3 for Film Center members; for more information call 773-562-6265. Films marked with a 4 are highly recommended.
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In The Uncertainty Principle (2000) director Ted Kim and cinematographer Milton Kam adroitly choreograph the talk and actions of a group of people whose paths intersect in a diner: a couple about to break up, a bumbling hit man looking for his victim, an older man wondering if he should hand over a bag of cash to a woman to take to China. Almost as engrossing is Gavin Wynn’s The Debt Collector (2000), in which a charismatic Dennis Tang plays a coolly efficient assassin who videotapes his victims before killing them. In Kuang Lee’s haunting but self-consciously arty Hae Lu (2000), a filmmaker remembers a childhood tale in which an immigrant in San Francisco’s Chinatown sees the ghost of his wife awaiting his return to Hong Kong, the parallel between that story and the filmmaker’s life prompting a remorseful reflection. Also included in this potpourri, films by Siu Ta, OMZ, Ted Vadakan, Marcus Young, Nobu Adilman, Eleana Kim, and Jennifer Bae, and animations by Jae-Suk So, Hiroshi Mori, and John Wilson Yoon. 97 min. (TS) Lee will attend the screening. (6:00)
Woman Soup
The Mirror Tells Her Lies
See Critic’s Choice. (7:30)
