The 4th Annual Asian-American Film Festival is in full swing at Loyola University Chicago this month.
The festival is a quasi-sociological study of shorter films and videos.
All programs start at 7 p.m. at Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus, 6525 Sheridan Rd. Admission is free. 773-271-0899 or 773-508-8997.
April 11, Crown Auditorium
– “Forbidden City, U.S.A.” (star) (star) (star) Directed by Arthur Dong, this film is an illuminating look at the once-famous San Francisco nightclub that not only catered to a large Asian-American audience when they were not always welcome elsewhere, but provided steady employment for assorted Asian-American entertainers.
– “Desi Remix Chicago Style” ((star) (star) 1/2), by local videographer Balvinder Dhenjan, goes behind the scenes at dance clubs in Chicago’s burgeoning Eastern Indian community to give us a personal look at how the music is ever-changing.
April 12, Crown Auditorium
– A full slate of films and videos is spearheaded by “U.S.A. vs. Tokyo Rose” ((star) (star) (star) ), a 45-minute video directed by Antonio A. Montanari, which reveals the long-buried true story about the infamous World War II radio personality who was supposedly cackling over the airwaves as American soldiers went to their death. In fact, Iva Toguri was a Los Angeles native and a UCLA graduate who found herself working for Japanese radio due to U.S. bureaucracy and cultural paranoia, and was in many ways a victim herself.
– The stirring and beautiful “Voices of the Morning” ((star) (star) (star) (star) ) is Meena Nanji’s 15-minute video that does a superlative job of analyzing the difficult role of being female in Islamic societies. It is both a political document and a fascinating work of art.
– Other films of note are “A Nice Arrangement” ((star) (star) 1/2), which takes place the day of a traditional Indian wedding; “Assimilation/a simulation” ((star) (star) ), which examines the power of cultural dominance over issues of beauty and self-esteem; and “One Hundred Eggs A Minute” ((star) (star) 1/2), an experimental documentary about a San Francisco artist who looks back at her childhood spent working in her family’s fortune-cookie factory.
April 24, Finnegan Auditorium
– This program contains the biggest draw of the festival, “Girls Like Us” ((star) (star) (star) (star) ), directed by Jane C. Wagner and Tina DiFeliciantonio, which recently won a major award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Using a documentary style, “Girls Like Us” takes a sometimes humorous, sometimes painful look at the lives of four teenage girls in South Philadelphia and follows them over four years.
Also screening is “Super Flip” ((star) (star) 1/2), an intimate study of a first-generation Filipina maid in San Francisco, who has little choice but to suffer the institutional sexism of her small, tight-knit community.
April 30, Crown Auditorium
– “Animal Appetites” ((star) (star) (star) 1/2), Michael Cho’s 20-minute video, humorously examines cultural hypocrisy through the story of two Cambodian men who were arrested in Southern California for killing and eating a dog. “On Cannibalism” ((star) (star) 1/2) is also a clever take on misconceptions that can cause injury, as Indonesian videographer Fatimah Tobing Rony looks back at the role of the “savage” in early film. (Christine Choy’s eagerly awaited “The Shot Heard Round The World,” about the Japanese student killed in Louisiana in 1992, was unavailable for preview.)
