Festival to offer look into Asian-American life through films, discussion

Festival
to offer look into Asian-American life through films, discussion
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Rice students,
staff and faculty will have the opportunity to experience
Asian-American culture through film, literature and music
at upcoming events at the Rice Media Center.

The Asian-American
Film and Literature Festival will be held Feb. 23-25. The
event, free and open to the public, will commence Feb. 23
with a 6:30 p.m. reception followed by a keynote address
by Houston City Councilman Gordon Quan.

Panel discussions
will be held throughout the weekend, including a roundtable
discussion Feb. 24 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the International
Conference Facility at James A. Baker III Hall. Guests will
be Russell Leong, a poet, writer and documentary filmmaker,
and independent filmmaker Greg Pak. The discussion will
be moderated by Chiu-Mi Lai, a lecturer in Rice’s Center
for the Study of Languages. The roundtable discussion is
sponsored by the Center for the Study of Cultures, the Transnational
China Project of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy and the Chinese Community Center.

Films that will
be screened throughout the weekend include:

• “Turbans,”
which explores the inner struggles of an Asian-Indian immigrant
family torn between cultural traditions and the desire for
social acceptance in America, Feb. 23, 7:55 p.m.
• “First Person Plural,” the story of a South
Korean girl adopted by an American family and an official
selection in the documentary competition at the Sundance
Film Festival, Feb. 23, 8:35 p.m.
• “Citizen Hong Kong,” a portrait of San
Francisco filmmaker Ruby Yang’s childhood home, Feb.
23, 9:50 p.m.
• “Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women,”
a documentary about Korean women forced into sexual servitude,
Feb. 24, 1:20 p.m.
• “Taxi-Vala/An Autobiography,” a documentary
that explores New York’s South Asian communities, Feb.
24, 2:17 p.m.
• “Perpetual Emotion 101,” a series of Asian-American
films, Feb. 24, 4 p.m.
• “Summer in My Veins,” a landmark documentary
about a gay Indian filmmaker, Feb. 24, 5:05 p.m.

The festival’s
final day will feature several films relating to Asian-American
students and young adults and their experiences. The films
that will be shown Feb. 25 include “Paper Birds,”
7 p.m.; “Mixed Feelings,” 7:18 p.m.; “Mommy,
What’s Wrong?” 8:30 p.m.; and “Perpetual
Emotion 101,” 8:47 p.m.

For the full
schedule of events visit the Web at <www.owlnet.rice.edu/~josephg/asamfest/index.html>.

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