The tenth annual Asian American Showcase, presented by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media and the Gene Siskel Film Center, continues Friday through Thursday, April 7 through 13, with screenings at the Film Center, 164 N. State. Tickets are $9, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members; for more information call 312-846-2600.
R Eve & the Fire Horse
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
An auspicious debut for Canadian filmmaker Julia Kwan, this 2005 feature follows two young sisters on their divergent paths to recovery after their beloved grandmother dies. The older girl (Hollie Lo), acting as interpreter for her English-challenged mother (Vivian Wu), is converted to Christianity by some door-to-door evangelists, while the younger child (Phoebe Kut), born under the unlucky zodiac sign of the Fire Horse, has a more elastic view of spirituality and communes easily with Jesus, the Maitreya Buddha, and a dancing goddess. Lovingly realized and light of touch, this is a beguiling family movie. In English and subtitled Cantonese. 92 min. (AG) Kwan will attend the screening. a 7:45 PM
Punching at the Sun
Georgia Lee makes her writing and directing debut with this predictable but sincere 2005 comedy about the trials of a suburban Chinese-American family. The mother and three daughters, preoccupied with their busy lives, fail to comprehend the deepening depression of the recently retired father (a deadpan Tzi Ma). Unwilling to seek professional help and consoled only by old videos of his daughters, he makes several feeble attempts at suicide and contemplates entering a Buddhist monastery. Lee suggests that Asians sacrifice family to assimilate into American culture, hardly an original notion but one conveyed here with humor and plangency. 90 min. (JK) Lee will attend the screening. a 8 PM
For 25 years Chicago musician and filmmaker Tatsu Aoki has been forging a modest, meditative cinema that abjures grand statements to focus on the rhythms of daily life and its tiny moments of beauty. Of the five works on this retrospective program, the two longest are rambling, uneven Super-8 affairs that nonetheless offer a fascinating mix of improvisational home movie and more lyrical moments: in Solutions (1991) scenes of Aoki’s filmmaking and home life are interrupted by a brief but lovely meditation on a wineglass, and in Landing (1998) static, out-of-focus window views contrast with the varied rhythms of horses walking in a circle. The best film, Local Color 1 (1987), combines distorted street images in multiple superimposition to suggest a lovely and mysterious moving tapestry. 105 min. (FC) Aoki will attend the screening. a 6 PM
See listing for Fri 4/7. a 8 PM
