Film Categories: Families

  • Sex, Politics & Sticky Rice

    Protests, potlucks, and three-ways are just the “tip of the rice bowl” for five Asian American lesbians recounting their adventures in sex, love, and queer activism. They were among the first generation of out Asian Pacific Islander queer activists in the San Francisco Bay Area. While Crystal Jang falls hard for her PE teacher, Gisele Pohan’s immigrant father dares her to join the 1979 Gay & Lesbian March on Washington. Helen Zia and Lia Shigemura keep a “chart” of the various hook ups and break ups. Zee Wong discovers the joys of lesbian sex in her first girl-on-girl menage a…

  • Semiotics of Sab

    This experimental film essay explores the poetics of identity through an oblique portrait of gay Japanese American actor Sab Shimono. For more than five decades, Shimono has performed on stage and screen in over 150 roles as warlords, bus boys, and businessmen. Shimono asks, “How is it that we know who we are?” Recalling early structuralist works by Hollis Frampton and Martha Rosler, Semiotics of Sab displays the grammatology of queer Asian American masculinity through conflicting lexicons of race, representation, and selfhood.

  • this year, here

    A contemplation on queer histories, explored through memories of a family cottage.

  • Sophie’s Letter

    During the composition of the letter to her abusive father, Sophie identifies with her inner wounded child (Little Sophie) and gradually finds what she needs to grow beyond the limits and boundaries that were burned into her psyche so many years earlier.

  • I’m Waiting for Mama

    Alex and his father are going through a difficult period.

  • Leavings

    The end of life comes for one half of a long term love relationship. “Leavings” is about the last sacred moments alone together before authorities, family and friends learn of the death. It portrays a tender offering that begins to deal with the messy remains of a vessel so well known as to have been studied intimately.

  • First Comes Love

    “First Comes Love” is somewhat like an extended musical number, with perfectly choreographed scenes of four traditional wedding ceremonies accompanied by a schizophrenic but amusing medley of popular love songs. The celebratory atmosphere is interrupted midway through to remind us that there are still a few countries in the world that refuse to legitimize homosexual unions. The film doesn’t attempt to defend – or discredit – the institution of marriage. Instead, it reveals many subtle emotions surrounding the events and raises questions about how the double standard regarding marriage affects both gay and straight couples.

  • The House

    For one curler, it’s not just a regular night at the local curling rink. Can she face her fears and find the strength to throw her final rock?

  • UUFO

    “UUFO” consists of six short chapters/stories. Each chapter describes a memory. The film deals with conflicting interpretations of China from the 1960s onwards, contrasting past generations’ stories with my own generation’s interpretations. UUFO stands for Universal Unidentified Flying Object.

  • Royal Jelly

    The film begins in abstraction, then we are greeted by a drag queen that we follow down the rabbit hole to meet the menagerie of people that have become her community.