VAFF on Saturday:
DISTANT RELATIONGS features Karin Lee film “Comrade Dad”
More at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival:
Check out Saturay's programming at VAFF.
My
friend Karin Lee is featured for the program Distant Relations, with
her film Comrade Dad. Karin is an amazing person, winning a
Canadian Academy (Genie) Award for Made in Canada (2000), a story about
adopted babies from China in Canada. She also made Canadian Steel, Chinese Grit
(1998) a historical documentary about the Chinese who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Sat. Nov. 4th, 1:30 PM
Families
shape who we are—and how we exist in time and space. This collection of
films looks at women and men, children and parents, and the way in
which these relations are configured by generation, geography,
politics, and custom.
Father And Son
Director/Writer/Producer: Joe Chang
Animation | Beta | Colour | 2006 | 5 minutes | Canada
Joe Chang’s animated short film draws inspiration from his 6-year old
son and his perceptions of the process of bonding between parent and
child. With humour and sentiment, it hopes to draw people’s attention
to the extraordinary moments in our otherwise ordinary lives.
Canadian Premiere
Comrade Dad
Director/Writer/Producer: Karin Lee
Documentary | Beta | Colour | 2005 | 26 minutes | Canada
Karin Lee’s father ran a Communist bookstore on Vancouver’s Skid Row
from the mid-1960’s until the early 1980’s. Her experimental
documentary twists the memories of a socialist-raised child into the
reflections of an adult who is conflicted over the schism between
idealism and capitalism.
Director in Attendance
62 Years And 6,500 Miles
Director/Writer/Producer: Anita Wen-Shin Chang
Documentary | Beta | Color | 2005 | 52 minutes | USA
Anita Chang’s grandmother was an award-winning writer and an activist
with the Taipei Women’s Rights Organization. This biographical
documentary looks at the challenges of constructing history, both the
personal history of Ama and the political history of post-colonial,
globalized Taiwan.
Canadian Premiere
The Women’s Kingdom
Director/Writer/Producer: Xialoi Zhou
Documentary | Beta | Colour | 2005 | 21 minutes | USA
The Mosuo are a minority tribe who live by a beautiful lake in
Southwestern China. They are known as the last matriarchal society in
China because of their 1,000 year old practice of “walking marriage”.
Mosuo men walk into the rooms of women at night, and leave at daybreak.
In Mosuo, women don’t depend on men for money, and fathers don’t live
with their children. Many tourists have started to visit the Mosuo
because they believe it is a “free love” society. Tourism has brought
the Mosuo wealth, but it has also changed their culture. What kinds of
dilemmas are the Mosuo now struggling with, and how do they feel about
the future?
Canadian Premiere
Celebrity Host for this program:
Kameron Louangxay
A graduate of the UBC Theatre Department, Kaeron has spent the past 2
years in Toronto and currently calls Vancouver home. Past and recent
work includes 16 Blocks, Mayday, the Canadian film short, Comrade Mine, and Mina Shum’s Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity.