Film Categories: Asian

  • Tough Bananas

    As many people know, a “banana” is slang for an acculturated Asian who is yellow on the outside but white on the inside. “Tough Bananas” is a film by Chinese Canadian director, Keith Lock, from a nihilistic script written by Andy Xu. The story is about the friendship between two fourteen-year-old boys that comes into existence and blossoms, but is ultimately destroyed by betrayal. Bob Lin and Ted Wang meet in their schoolyard on a fateful day when Bob is bullied by bigger boys. It is Ted who heroically comes to his rescue, and after that Bob and Ted become…

  • Unknown Soldiers

    “In ‘Unknown Soldiers’, Veronika Soul uses experimental film techniques to create a visual and aural mélange that features children’s harrowing tales of wartime Japan, a retelling of ‘Godzilla,’ a Japanese tourist atop the Empire State Building, and a meditation on the role of the hamburger in the life of a traveller… Hers is an original, amusing and sometimes distrurbing vision of East-West relations.” – Karen Cooper, Director of Film Forum, NYC

  • Bird that Chirped on Bathurst, The

    The intermittently heard voice-over talks about a woman’s self-awareness – being unable to know if she has really changed or not. The images are esoteric and hard to interpret: young women in black in various urban settings, something moving rhythmically. A personal, yet intriguing film.

  • Waving

    “Waving” is a short film exploring the cyclical rituals of life, death and the family. A personal narrative chronicles the relationship between the author and her grandmother. Visual imagery works to create a strong metaphor, suggestive of the overwhelming, consuming power of grief.

  • Black Earth

    A film-essay on the earth’s body, “Black Earth” follows a woman’s journey through time and space. The film’s images and utterances and sounds poetically resonate a world as woman, a woman suffering the fate of humanity. “Black Earth” was filmed on location in India.

  • When East Meets East

    A documentary that looks at post-colonial identity, in particular Chinese identity and its construction in the international cinema of ethnic Chinese. Canadian filmmaker Kalli Paakspuu and student activists from China’s pro-democracy movement, Kevin Feng Ke, used an hermeneutic approach and double-voice techniques to expand our notions of the Chinese by surveying the 90’s cinema from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, United States and Canada. The filmmakers question the taken-for-granted identity within ethnic communities, weaving a geographic and cultural reality that is uniquely contradictory and inhabited by multiple identities living outside national boundaries.

  • You Take Care Now

    “Fleming’s perilous travelogue recites, in first person voice-over, a tale of two cities. The first is Bridiski, where the patent sexism of her surround leads her to seek refuge in the hotel room of her unscrupulous tour guide. The second moves closer to home – where the simplest of street crossings becomes a nightmare journey of dark collisions, broken bones and ambulance drives.” – Mike Hoolboom

  • Swell

    Desire disorients and bodily swellings result. “A lovely concoction of hand-tinted and scratched film evoking a woman’s flight from concrete to nature – spurred on by a kiss.” – Gordon Bowness, Xtra!

  • Offering, The

    This is a film about the progression and the passing of life. Without dialogue and music, the story centres on the evolution of love and friendship between a Japanese monk and the young novice who has come into his life, from their initial encounter to their final parting. In rejecting his own faith and drowning in self-doubts, the novice leaves his life of unfulfilled potentials. The passing of life is demarcated by the progression of seasons. The only force that propels the narrative forward is the poetic seasonal variations in nature. The passing of life, in this life, in this…

  • Sweet Heat

    Sixty thousand men and women of Asian ancestry served in the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. Many fought in Vietnam as gunners, helicopter pilots and infantrymen. Some worked as nurses, journalists and other support staff. This film chronicles the stories of San Francisco-born Cole Lew and Brooklyn-born Don Lau as they experienced Vietnam.