Film Categories: Asian

  • Queen, The

    Bobby, a Korean-American teenage outcast, is working at his parents’ dry cleaners on prom weekend. When the prom queen and her boyfriend stop by with their dress and tuxedo, Bobby creates his own night to remember. Jury Award for Best Short Film (tie), Philadelphia QFest 2011. Awarded “Best of Fest” at Palm Springs International Short Fest, Telluride, Aspen ShortsFest, Seattle, Rhode Island, Los Angeles Film Festival and nominated for the Iris Prize (UK Film Council).

  • Domestic Shorthair Underground

    A seemingly normal subway ride across Manhattan transforms into a comic anthropological study of the local and exotic species of New York City’s gay “wildlife.” On this romp through the underground, filmed in mock National Geographic style, viewers will get to know such fabulous species as the Tiny Exotic, the Chelsea Thoroughbred, and the Upper Westsidus Reform Judaicus, among many others. A witty observation of the fascinating and diverse breeds that co-exist within one great city, “Domestic Shorthair Underground” brings a new definition to ‘underground’ guerrilla filmmaking.

  • Ville – Quelle Ville?

    “Ville – Quelle Ville?” reflects a satirical view of city life, commonplace and redundant. Urban life is portrayed as a series of rituals: coming of age in an environment shaped by generations, obscured by the constant barrage of everyday life. The film randomly touches upon key events familiar to everyone in North America, a melting pot of human experiences. As in any city there is an aspect of alienation, here displayed through the eyes of a young woman caught in the web of her own daily existence. “Ville – Quelle Ville?” (4 min.,1984): While Onodera’s earlier work explored the possibility…

  • Dead Zone

    Dead Zone (2.5 min.,1985): Images, repetitive in visual completion, combine with a popular music track and self-acknowledging voice-over to form a void of numbed loneliness and dissatisfaction. Part of the triptych “Three Short Films.”

  • Slow Burn

    In this hyper-stylized western set against a winterscape, a mysterious girl with a criminal past wants to make a fresh start and decides to symbolize this decision by getting her very first tattoo. She meets two tattoo artists who are immediately smitten with her, and in the time-honoured tradition of the western, the artists battle each other in a duel for the right to design the tattoo.

  • Bol (Speak!)

    A cyclist meets a stranger in the market. A boy waits for his mother to return home. A man wakes up to find that his face is being stolen by shadows. Three separate encounters become the departure point for “Bol (Speak!),” a short dramatic experimental triptych on the nature of violence. Inspired by the Pakistani Marxist poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem Bol, and drawn from real events, the film uses still photographs, puppets and folk dance to comment on the increasing ubiquity and tenor of violence in South Asia. It is a gradually escalating experience of violence. All three chapters…

  • Bus Pass, The

    A woman sees the girl of her dreams on the train home from work. Will she dare take the plunge and ask for her number? Winner – Audience Award for Best Lesbian Short at Hamburg International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (2011)

  • Arrival, The

    In this satirical short, a close-knit community is rattled by an invasion of the queerest kind. Eyewitness accounts reveal the terror that has befallen the members of an Asian-American church, leaving them fragile and shaken. “The Arrival” is a hilarious take on LGBT issues that cleverly mixes fact and fiction.

  • tide goes in, the tide goes out, The

    A hand-processed, black-and-white ode to the secret world of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). “The tide goes in, the tide goes out” revels in the material and chemical qualities of the film medium, with the fragility of the film mirroring that of the jellyfish. Made for 30 x 30: Newly Commissioned FIlms for Thirty Years of LIFT Selected screenings: Images Festival, 2012 (Toronto, ON); Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival, 2012 (Germany); Jihlava International Documentary Festival, 2012 (Czech Republic); (S8) Mostra Cinema Periférico, 2016 (Spain)

  • A+

    Cinema finds its accounts in an uncommon ledger, whose lines and tabulations conceal the greatest love of all.