MY SIGHT IS LINED WITH VISIONS
1990s Asian American Film & Video
January 26, 2021 - January 25, 2022
The Vault: My Sight is Lined with Visions' rotating monthly spotlight on rare, underground, and transgressive work.
Each short film or video in the Vault is accompanied by an essay and an Instagram Live Q&A with the filmmaker.
February 2021
Four or Five Accidents, One June... (dir. Roddy Bogawa; 1989; 25 min.)
A prototypical mashup of techniques, speculation, enactments, and fiction following a delivery driver's route through San Diego.
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"Cinematic Delivery," by Aiko Masubuchi
March 2021
koré (dir. TRAN T. Kim-Trang; 1994; 17 min.)
The third short in Tran's The Blindness Series (1992-2006), this essay film situates its agile, trenchant explorations of sexuality, desire, and institutional treatments of people of color and AIDS patients around the blindfold.
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"After Image," by Emerson Goo
April 2021
The Trained Chinese Tongue (dir. Laurie Wen; 1994; 20 min.)
Securing her invites from chance meetings at a fish counter in a Boston Chinatown market, Laurie Wen takes us to four home-cooked meals where she, and her camera, become welcomed interlocutors.
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"An Incredible and Ordinary Feast," by Chanel Kong
May 2021
Mommy, Mommy Where's My Brain? (dir. Jon Moritsugu; 1986; 9 min.)
Both relentlessly referencing and sending up French film theory, this destructive short expresses the frustration and the possible ingenuity of making films within an academic setting.
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"Original Intent," by Mackenzie Lukenbill
June 2021
Voices of the Morning (dir. Meena Nanji; 1992; 13 min.),
It Is a Crime (dir. Meena Nanji; 1996; 6 min.)
These two experimental videos take the analog art of videotape mixing, and, while quoting both the text and formal structures of Muslim and South Asian women writers, deconstruct the narrative strategies of more straightforward media critiques.
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July 2021
History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige (dir. Rea Tajiri; 1991; 32 min.)
This landmark personal excavation of recorded history and ephemeral memory mediates sources such as Hollywood films, Dept. of Defense footage, newsreels, family photos, oral testimonies, and filmic re-creations of Japanese American relocation and incarceration during WWII into a powerful reckoning on the strategies of silence.
"Visible Aparitions," by Vicky Du
Instagram Live Q&A with Rea Tajiri (posted soon!)
August 2021
Bontoc Reconsituted (Sentient Collective, 2021, 3 min.)
“I privatized the footage by putting it into a documentary, and the time has come to tear it all apart and make it public together.”
"Call to Action," Marlon Fuentes
"Museum of You," by Aaron Hunt
September 2021
Dirty Laundry (dir. Richard Fung; 1996; 30 min.),
Sea in the Blood (dir. Richard Fung; 2000; 26 min.)
These two films by influential filmmaker, theorist, and community activist Richard Fung trouble the neat narratives of migration, existence, and sexual presentation of Asians in the Americas by crossing both the boundaries of nation-states and experimental film techniques.
"Liberatory Escapes," by Justin Nguyen
