beyond joy luck club

A PREVIEW OF THE ASIAN-AMERICAN SERIES AT DOCFILMS
PROGRAMMED BY ANNIE SHENG

An Asian-American movie? Let me think. Wait… Joy Luck Club. And… Hero? (Nope, sorry, neither of the above.) How about a lesbian romantic comedy or, say, a sentimental quartet of robot stories? (… Now we’re talking!) One of the goals of DocFilms is to provide quality films that might otherwise go unseen by the general public. Doc follows in these lines for this quarter’s Asian-American Cinema series, to be shown 7pm every Tuesday for all of spring quarter. This series, entitled “Beyond Joy Luck Club” seeks to reach past the Amy Tan domination of the Asian-American genre and expose a wider set of Asian-American films, recently released from 1998 to present. It won’t include Joy Luck Club… no, it won’t include the beautifully filmed Hero either. Instead, the series offers 10 fresh new films by Asian-American directors, whose titles may be a bit more obscure, but plenty worth seeing.

The set of Doc’s Asian-American films does not compromise universality in its relative obscurity. In fact, some of the films have achieved wider acknowledgement beyond the status of underground hits thanks to their universal character and their ability to speak on tender, heartfelt individual human experiences. Aforementioned Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) and Michael Kang’s The Motel are two of such films. Characters in both Saving Face and The Motel express frank grace in their Asian-American identity. Saving Face may be about a lesbian relationship, yet the issue of sexuality neither weighs down nor eclipses the relationship between mother and daughter (expressed often in the linguistically real-life code-switching between English and Mandarin). Poised and beautiful Joan Chen delivers a very convincing performance as an Asian mother. She often voices displeasure and disbelief wrapped in fits of Mandarin: “Is that how you speak to your ma who worked nights so you could eat? Who stayed in labor without painkillers so you wouldn't turn dim-witted like your cousin Jimmy? Had I known you would grow so ungrateful I would have held you in.”

Like Saving Face, several films in the series also bring to light issues of sexuality and acceptance of deviation from society’s (and especially an Asian’s society’s) norms as part of questioning one’s identity. In Rice Rhapsody, Sylvia Chang (Eat Drink Man Woman, The Red Violin) stars as a traditional mother who juggles maintaining a restaurant and raising three sons. With two gay sons, Chang strives to keep her last son straight—at least as a means of continuing the family name. (As an added perk, Martin Yan steps out of his comfortable Food Network role as a TV personality to appear as Chang’s best friend, Kim Chui.) Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin deals with a similar subject of sexual encounters and deviation. Dark and moving, his work is brimming with teenage angst, aliens, and sex.

These two films, Mysterious Skin and Rice Rhapsody, challenge the boundaries of Asian-American Cinema in two respects. Mysterious Skin sports an all-white cast and raises questions of the responsibility of Asian-American directors to bring color in the cast of their films. Must Asian-American filmmakers be aware of the actions and be beholden to a wider Asian-American community? Rice Rhapsody also trots at the borders of the definition of Asian-American Cinema. The film takes the series out of the States and into a rather straight-laced Singapore. Its inclusion in the series seems to ask: Can a movie set in Asia speak to a similar set of issues of how one negotiates an Asian-American identity?

Two directors will be flying in to Chicago to speak at the screenings. Director Steven Mallorca of Slow Jam King will address his wedding-jilting, country-singing road-trip of a feature film. Steven Mallorca directed, wrote, produced, edited and shot the film digitally at over a dozen locations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nashville on a relentless 31 day shoot with a nearly nonexistent budget. The main focus of Slow Jam King is Filipino-American JoJo, former high school salutatorian who dropped out of college to impress a Filipino girl with a newly-adopted hiphopper lifestyle. His ridiculous antics lead him to a road trip to Nashville, through which he ultimately grows up and grows closer to his friends and tripmates.

In addition to Director Steven Mallorca, Director Darryl Fong will be speaking on his film, Kung Phooey!, a spoof of a variety of martial arts films. Darryl Fong’s frustration of the lack of Asian roles in Hollywood was the motivation of the film. He directed satire not only towards martial art films, but to Hollywood’s Asian stereotypes and the Asian-American community in general. Darryl Fong will be bringing his personal (and only existing) copy of 35mm prints to DocFilms.

The Asian-American Cinema series will also include a set of shorts and a documentary as a departure to the familiar brand of narrative feature films. Greg Pak’s Robot Stories includes four tales of robot and android affection. Grace Lee’s documentary, The Grace Lee Project, explores what’s embodied in a name. Grace Lee treks across the US to interview other Grace Lee’s, who may share her identity, but, as we learn much too quickly, only nominally.

It’s nigh-time that DocFilms represented Asian-American works in their selection of screenings. Asian-American Cinema has been celebrated by the Gene Siskel Film Center for five years now and this year’s 2006 launch of the Asian-American Showcase at the Center, from March 30 to April 13, once again offers a series of fresh feature films, documentaries, and shorts. I applaud DocFilms for their decision to acknowledge the Asian-American film community and show these remarkable, defining films. The series comes in a time of great change internally within the Uof C— the RSO PanAsia (who partly funded this spring’s series) was formed in 2002 and Asian and Asian-American students have just gained minority status two years ago in 2004. It’s invigorating to see the University and respective RSO’s finally responding to the voices on campus and celebrating Asian-American culture, identity and art.