Valerie Soe
2021
All Orientals Look the Same
Valerie Soe
This is a short anti-racist film trying to invoke and combat stereotypes. I'm not sure how succesful it is, but it is still written about in Asian American film studies. Clearly as the film shows all Orientals (a term that Edward Said has helped denaturalize) do NOT look the same!
All Orientals Look the Same
Women of Vision
Alexandra Juhasz
Frances Negrón Muntaner, Pearl Bowser
Documentary that highlights 18 women and covers a period of time from the 50's to the 90's. The women chosen were selected because they represent the real diversity within both feminism and independent film and video. They range in age from 65 to 25. They are black, white, Puerto Rican, Yugoslavian, Asian American, biracial. They are straight, gay and bisexual. What they share is a need to express their own interpretations of what American culture is and could be and a belief that this work is made particularly powerful through the media.
Women of Vision
The Chinese Gardens
Valerie Soe
The Chinese Gardens looks at the lost Chinese community in Port Townsend, WA, examining anti-Chinese violence in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s and drawing connections between past and present race relations in the United States. Through text, brief interviews, and images of the empty spaces of Port Townsend's former Chinatown, the film examines early instances of racism against the Chinese in the U.S., from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through various lynchings, beatings, and murders. The Chinese Gardens also documents Chinese American resistance to these crimes, illuminating the hidden history of that tumultuous time.
The Chinese Gardens