Mia decides that she cannot live in a Godless universe and embarks on a spiritual journey with an Eastern European Zen Master in training, only to discover that the path to enlightenment is market with potholes and the delusions are vast and plentiful. (Reel Asian)
The film imparts a message about death to the audience by using a projection technique to reflect the image of death. The director uses the camera to present his will, after death, in an artistic abstractive format. It is a ritual ceremony self-portrayed in a language of darkness. (YunTech)
A high school student discovers more than sex during an affair with his college age tutor in this beautifully rendered table about the inevitability of lost innocence. (Reel Asian)
A techno poem that mixes fifties porn, lounge music, deadpan wit, and a lover’s sweet revenge. An emotional breakdown takes form as broken video sync. (Reel Asian)
An evocative, meditative and abstract look at the life of Mrs. Chiba, the great aunt of Mieko Ouchi, and her time spent a Tuberculosis sanitarium in New Denver, BC. The film brings together still photos, poetry by the late Chie Kamegaya, and poerformances from Kita No Taiko. (Reel Asian)
When a Chinese guy and an Anglo-Australian girl go on a blind date, fate and food intervene to bring them together over a plate of noodles. A crosscultural romantic comedy that really sucks. (Reel Asian)
This film integrates two different directions of shot (left to right and right to left) in terms of frame by frame (1 to 1.2 to 2.28 to 28, and full shot to full shot). The film uses the direction of the camera’s movement to emulate human visual perception. (Reel Asian)
One night in her Chinese food and donut shop, a woman opens her fortune cookie only to find the winning combination for true love. As a police officer purchases a donut, she checks out his vital stats and discovers he may be the winning prize. (Reel Asian)
A hardworking Korean shop owner tries to extol the virtues of the quiet Korean stock boy to his wild daughter. Unbeknownst to the shop owner, his stock boy has a strange food fetish and may not be as trustworthy as he appears. (Reel Asian)
A comical live action animation featuring Frank the Horse and Bob the Bird. Bob must decide how far he should go for his lifelong pal when Frank gets into trouble with the law during a bout of unemployment. (Reel Asian)
An angel imprisoned by the walls of poverty stretches her hands towards the sunlight to become a butterfly. But the weight of the cruel world brings her crashing down, cracking her halo. This mesmerizing film borders on madness as our angel actions her escape. (Reel Asian)
For 11-year-old Trang, it’s going to be one of those days. She has to get her Vietnamese mother to attend her school’s parent-teacher interview, but it also happens to be delivery day for the garments in her mother’s sweatshop and her mum is way too busy. Delivery Day is an insight into the world of duck eggs, Toyota Celicas and outworkers, which explores both generations of the Vietnamese migrant experience through the eyes of a young girl. It is one of the few Australian dramas to depict Vietnamese Australians. (Letterboxd)
Centring around a modern ballet piece shot on location, parallel cut with the same footage being edited on a flatbed, this multi-disciplinary project involves not only music, dance and film, but new ways of looking at them.
Dowsing refers to a search for a vein of water in the earth with a divining rod. Sketches from a day in the life of an unusual girl, a day when all her daily routines seem condensed into one solitary dream. (Reel Asian)
Empty Orchestra takes a look at popular culture through the triple lens of tabloid, television, news reportage, and the personal narratives of karaoke singers.
By delving into the suppressed conflicts and contradictions at the heart of many immigrant family histories, ‘Fighting Grandpa’ allows a glimpse of how a previous generation, bound by tradition and culture, built a complex, ambiguous love that their grandchildren can only barely comprehend. (Greg Pak)
A post colonial love story between a professor who feels trapped in a cultural backwater and the much younger Mark, an adoring student who pursues him with single minded determination. (Reel Asian)
The twisted vagaries of teenhood unfold in this slice of life drama about a young woman yearning to be a photographer and her girlfriend who is having an affair with her cousin. A Rohmeresque take that ends up, like so many Eric Rohmer films, at a beachside resort with unsorted wishes and tentative resolutions. (Reel Asian)
A frustrated artist, unable to put her ideas on paper, turns to an over-the-top daydream in which her filmmaking garners her fame, fortune, kudos, exotic vacations, social standing, ardent suitors and parental approval. (Moving Images)
A hilarious mock infomercial selling his home consumers AsiaTech’s How to Be More Chinese kits. After all, Asians are taking over the world and everybody’s got a touch of yellow fever. (Reel Asian)
Student documentary trying to answer the questions: Who is Chinese? What is Chinese? How do you measure how Chinese you are? Jook Sing tries to define identify through interviews from both sides of the Chinese scale with insight, honesty and humour. (Reel Asian)
Wealth is just a few stock points away, a better life is merely an immigration interview away, and love and regret is over with a blink of an eye. Characters struggle to climb over the fence to get a greener view. (Reel Asian)
Part video, love letter, part obsessional fantasy about a gum-smacking Jersey girl, Lifesize plays with the concept of “hyper autobiography” and explores themes of performance, memory, desire and cynicism. (Reel Asian)
A drunken salaryman descends into a seemingly deserted underpass literally the bowels of Seoul night life—losing more than his shirt in a remarkable encounter with a naked stranger. Who is the victim and who is the aggressor? (Reel Asian)
Story of Cane is presented through eight chapters of experiences. A reconstruction of the biblical story of Cain and Abel with a reflection on violence, sacrifice and basic human instinct. (Reel Asian)
A day in the life of Yung’s gay male “Lotus Sisters.” From the noodle house to Stanley Park, this video captures a specifically West Coast Asian queer sensibility. (Reel Asian)
A young woman’s relationship to her mother and sense of personal history is revealed in an evocative docu-memoir composition of home movie footage, recordings and the subconscious thread of a recurring dream. Thoughts of immigration, motherhood, daughterhood and spirituality culminate in a cathartic relay of strength between mother and daughter. This strong emotional undertow conjures a desire to look deeper into the artifact, evidence and testimony of memory. (The Center for Asian American Media)
The film uses reproduction, repetition and the interformat of film to explore an investigate film’s essential elements, Behind the illusion, these elements allow the viewer to discover the source of film, film itself as material, the mechanical movement, projection through light. (Reel Asian)
A young man and a woman discuss the semantics of abortion but there’s a mouse in the house. The guy musters all his brains and dexterity to kill the mouse. The woman leaves. A story of mice and men. (Reel Asian)
Targeted by a gang of racist bullies, a young computer genius writes a program to change reality. New Reality was shot in 4.5 days entirely on DV for $550, and then graded in After Effects for the “film look.” (Reel Asian)
The single dimensional representation of Asian men as “silent, sex-less, obedient houseboys” of mystical “martial arts masters” is challenged and unravelled through the experiences and voices of Asian-American men. (Reel Asian)
In this tongue in cheek short film, a young man scolds his mother for participating in a beauty pageant. A 1960s Coca Cola industrial film shot in the Philippines plays in the background, providing its own ironic commentary. (Reel Asian)
The ingenious riff off of the complexities of power and sexual image making should be mandatory viewing for anyone inclined to justify censorship on the grounds of objectification. (Reel Asian)
Could getting fucked by a white man be the ultimate transgressive act for the political Asian fag? Decide for yourself in this fearless exploration. (Reel Asian)
Strife and simple pleasures abound when a working class family inherits an unwanted refrigerator. Set in the 1970s when electrical appliances were considered a “luxury,” the film’s neorealist portrayal is at once nostalgic and life affirming. (Reel Asian)
Having arrived in a new country, a young girl realises that the journey has just begun. This short but beautiful animation uses oil paints under camera. (Reel Asian)
A young boy stumbles upon a giant snake in the forest, and so begins an obsessive fascination. Serpents and dragons are powerful thematic symbols in this film about racial, sexual and religious prejudice. (Reel Asian)
Shot at the Chinatown Basketball Tournament in New York City, August 1997, which the video maker stumbled upon by chance. Season of the Boys is about the myth of a “boy-season” that all men have been waiting for, which comes just once and only for a brief moment. (Ho Tam)
In a playful world of shadows and light, a lonely prince learns the true nature of his games. This stop motion puppet animation was a finalist at the World Animation Celebration, USA, and Dendy Film Awards, Sydney. (Reel Asian)
An injured ex-factory worker hides in a tiny booth selling lottery tickets and befriends a customer who sells porn videos on the street. While exploiting the plan desires of strangers, the pairs unusual symbiosis comes to an end when they must confront their own. (Reel Asian)
James and Kevin are friends and live in Hong Kong. When Kevin finds out that his Chinese father wants to send him away to England to study, he decides to spend a summer day with his friend James. Then something unexpected happens. (IMDB)
When boy meets girl, she tells him, “The camera is my suicide note.” An elegiac, essayistic film that takes the form of a video diary to document traumas both physical and psychic. (Reel Asian)
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”. (Reel Asian)
A modern day love story of lesbian slackers and superhero lovers. Short in grainy black and white, the film struggles with the questions of desire, sexual identity, and, you know, whatever. (Reel Asian)
Without dialogue or music and shot in cinematic 35mm, The Offering centers on the evolution of love and friendship between a monk and the novice who comes into his life. (Reel Asian)
The picnic on a serene winter afternoon takes an unexpected turn in this stunning evocation of one family’s loss. Inspired by bloodless newspaper reports about suicides in the wake of Korea’s economic crisis. (Reel Asian)
Lesson 1: Suffice it to say, the queen in question is not the matriarch of the Windsor clan. Here, finally, is a language instruction class that truly teaches you where to place your tongue, Lesson 2: The class offers phrases for cruising in the park, Berlitz was never this useful. Lesson 3: The teacher gets really involved with her students in this final episode. (Reel Asian)
Who can foresee the moment of death? Breaking the “skin” of everyday reality, what is left for the living is the process or giving social meaning to the sudden end of life. Kim’s video is a kind of memorial for this grieving. (Reel Asian)
What is whiteness without dark marginal lines of definition? Literally nothing. White/Out is an experimental in exposing that tries to hide under its multiple and camouflaged layers. (Reel Asian)
The English title for this experimental computer animation is “Oh my passion! Oh my fire!” Drawing on images and sounds from the filmmaker’s youth, Yanari portrays a forgotten side of Arab culture that has been overshadowed by war and destruction. (Reel Asian)
A quiet man tries to take a walk on the wild side, only to find self confidence in a pair of golden boxer shorts. A comedy about personal dating, obsession, self discovery and undergarments. (Reel Asian)
The Virtual Museum of Asian Canadian Cultural Heritage (VMAACH) was made possible with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canadian Culture Online Strategy.