Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • In Cairo

    Exploring the reasons why people travel, RM Vaughan recounts his journey to Egypt in a series of slow, reverse dissolves that show the narrator standing, like a classic tourist, before the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

  • Lead Role: Father

    When writer and director Joseph Chu puts out an open casting call for his new film based on his family, he never expects his own father to audition for the lead role. Caught somewhere between his real memories of his father and the fictional character he’s created, Joseph is forced to confront his own fears, hypocrisies, and realizations.

  • Crickets

    Sue, a 10-year-old Korean-Canadian, playfully pushes the limits until she finds herself in unexpected territory. “A bittersweet interracial romance between two prepubescent insect-lovers.” – Gemma Files, EYE Weekly Selected screenings & awards: Special Jury Prize, Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. Screenings in over a dozen festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival (1998); SXSW; and the New York, SF, Toronto, and LA Asian film festivals.

  • Wide-Eyed

    In an awkward attempt to meet the ideal western standards of beauty, Julie, a 16-year-old Korean-Canadian, obsesses about double eyelid surgery. Her tomboy sister Jean is fascinated yet repulsed by her older sister’s serious body-image issues. Neither of them can come to any entirely comfortable sort of compromise on the right way to love each other, or themselves. Selected screenings: International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany; Visual Communications, LA, California; Giffoni Film Festival, Salerno, Italy.

  • Paper, Scissors, Rock

    “Paper, Scissors, Rock” is the story of an unhappily married Korean woman who finds salvation in punk music after a breakdown.

  • 1000 Feet

    A walk through the city of Maputo becomes a poetic visual essay. Inspired by two Mozambican poems, its central themes are: shoes, time, space, history, humanity, reading the asphalt and the intrusive effect of a camera. Scenes from everyday life and a series of portraits link with radio loops and local ambiance sound. The curious gaze of a foreigner gradulally evolves to the fascinated look of a gues enchanted by the city and its people. Strangeness, obstruction and mutual unease are step by step replaced by contact and communication. Distance and closeness measured in feet: the theme for a possible…

  • Cleaning For Love

    Sent to Canada under a false identity her husband created for her, Colombian-born Luna finds herself working as a cleaning lady. She tries to get along with her co-workers, whom she considers economic refugees like herself; but her upper-class attitude alienates her. Luna fantasizes about the soap operas she used to watch. However, Chon Li, whom Mexican boss Manuel manipulates with promises of improving her status, forces Luna back to reality. Rarely is life as squeaky clean as soap, and Luna gradually starts scrubbing away the layer of grime that seems to coat everything. She learns from Abdel, a Sufi…

  • Pura Sangre

    Torn from the pages of a South American travelogue, “Pura Sangre” explores society’s obsession with sociological and biological bloodlines. Spanish-language version also available.

  • fall storm (california 2003)

    Sitting in a quiet room; listening to a storm out the window.

  • (panacea)

    Two lovers – a sailor and an artist – made of different fabrics (one skin, one pleather) spend their last afternoon together.