A man comes to terms with a critical part of himself.
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Shot on 16mm with an Eclair NPR.
Briefly featuring Hadrian Santos.
Some video footage of Mounir joining a pickup basketball game. In the film, he has never touched a basketball in his life and knows nothing about the rules. He thinks by simply running out there and imitating moves he's seen on TV, he'll fit right in. Featuring Al No'mani, Cliff Alexander, Michon Cook, Michael Shaun Sandy, Kaycee Ross and Arvel Chappell III.
This is the original promo trailer we shot over a couple of days in November 2006. Seems like ages ago. Though it may not capture the exact tone of the resulting feature, I'd like to think it stands on its own as some kind of odd creature. -- Shot by Chuck DeRosa on a Panasonic DVX-100. Production sound by Kevin Remón Thompson.
I went to a panel with the above title at the VC Film Fest today hosted by my man Tad Nakamura and old school Asian American doc maker, Spencer Nakasako.
It was a colorful, informal chat, but in the end two issues seemed to bubble up to the surface:
1) the fact that it's difficult to get Asian Americans to support Asian American films,
2) the fact that, while there are more Asian American films than ever before, many of them are bad.
Cross out the word "Asian American" (or even just "Asian") and both of these read as truisms about film and media today in general. Nothing new. I think the added problem for Asian American film, however, is that the phrase technically covers a lot of disparate groups that don't necessarily feel the need to support each other. It's a blanket label that in these times might be stretched too thin.