Memory and Transcendence:
Asian American Film Series 2008
Q. Lisa Bu
Project Assistant, AASP

Film Series Poster and Ticket Order Information

NEW YEAR BABY was chosen by the audience as their favorite documentary film of the festival. Congratulations!

You may want to watch this year’s Asian American Film Series with someone you love.

As part of the Wisconsin Film Festival, each of the four films tells a story about the power of memory, the possibility of transcending unhappy memories and, above all, the meaning of human connections.

In New Year Baby, Socheata Poeuv, a young Cambodian woman who grew up in the United States, was summoned to a family meeting on Christmas Day. There, she learned a shocking secret that her parents had been hiding for 25 years. The secret leads her family to undertake an emotional journey back to the killing fields of Cambodia and refugee camps in Thailand. Along the way, they struggle to understand the suffering of the family during the horror of the Khmer Rouge regime.

“My parents used to embarrass me,” Poeuv tells in the movie. “They were oddballs, awkward immigrants who still fermented fish in the kitchen and sprouted mung beans in the bathtub. The truth is my parents carried me further than I can imagine – across the border, over landmines and across the ocean to a new life in America.” Before leaving Cambodia, she arranges a surprise for her father that brings tears to his eyes. If you want to find out what the surprise is, come see the film on Saturday, April 5 at 2:30 PM or Sunday, April 6 at 12:45 PM at Chazen Museum 2, 800 University Ave.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon, is another tale about people trapped in unhappy memories who struggle to find their true identity. The only fictional film in the series is about Jenny, a South Korean adoptee. “I was born at the airport, 45 pounds and 45 inches tall,” Jenny reminisces. She grew up in a small town in Indiana with conflicted feelings about her American family. She moves to the New York City but the painful memories always follow her like a ghost. Under her independent, yet often indifferent demeanor, she longs for strong connections with those around her and to feel better about herself. Her story is about how memories can trap people.  It is also about the power to raise oneself above the wounds of life, if one dares to face the painful memories head-on. Jenny makes that choice. Come see how she does this on Thursday, April 3 at 9:30 PM at Bartell Theater, 113 E Mifflin Street.

The last two films in the series, Nã Kamalei: Men of Hula and Hollywood Chinese, illustrate that memory not only binds a family together, but also allows an ethnic community to reassess its history and inspire new pride.

Nã Kamalei: Men of Hula rejects the stereotyped image of hula dancing being only about beautiful exotic-looking young girls in coconut shell tops and grass skirts.  Telling the true story of hula, the film reveals that hula is an art expression that was practiced by both men and women as a sacred tradition for passing on Hawaiian culture and history. The film follows a legendary master hula teacher and his male hula group as they train for and compete in the largest hula competition in the world. Practicing hula as dance as well as a way of life, a group of rugged men of all ages are transformed into a brotherhood of warrior dancers with pride and masculine grace. You will be sitting on the edge of your seat while watching them, the underdog team, compete in the “Superbowl of Hula.” Don’t miss it on Friday, April 4 at 5 PM or Saturday, April 5 at 11:15 AM at Chazen Museum 2, 800 University Ave.

Hollywood Chinese explores the history of Chinese American filmmaking through a treasure trove of movie clips and interviews, from Fu Manchu to BrokebackMountain, from Christopher Lee to Ang Lee. Jack Nicholson, as private detective Jake Gittes, is told: “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.” Thom Powers of Toronto International Film Festival explains, “That haunting advice delivered to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown encapsulates the western notion of Chinese as separate and mysterious. Hollywood did much to promulgate those stereotypes when it wasn’t simply ignoring Asians altogether. Thankfully, director Arthur Dong won’t let us forget. In Hollywood Chinese, he pulls off a massive feat of memory, not just for Chinese audiences, but for all film lovers.”

Hollywood Chinese also uncovers a cinematic history with a connection right here in Madison today. While researching for his documentary, director Arthur Dong discovered two reels of what is now acknowledged as the first Chinese American film ever made, The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916). The film was written and directed by Marion Wong, a filmmaker in Oakland, California, who cast her sister-in-law and mother in the movie. One of Wong’s family, Lillian Tong, lives in Madison now.

“Seeing the film was the first time I ever saw even a picture of my great grandmother, and it really is amazing to see her moving!” Tong recalled. She also remembers a chest of drawers that belonged to her grandmother, “We found a pair of shoes like the ones worn by the bride in the movie. We also found some beautiful jackets and skirts like those in the movie, so I think it is true that what they show in the movie was actually the way Chinese dressed up in those days in Oakland and San Francisco.” The Curse of Quon Gwon had never found distribution or been seen by the public, but you can watch it with Hollywood Chinese on Thursday, April 3 at 7:45 PM at UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 Univ Ave.

This year’s Asian American Film Series reminds us what James Baldwin once said, “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” Memory is a powerful thing, even more so when it is collectively deposited in the history of a family or an ethnic community. Each of these films weaves us into the rich and complicated tapestry of people’s lives as they look for identity and direction.

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Last Updated 5/5/08