When I got into UC San Diego in 2018, there was a really popular video called “UC SCHOOL STEREOTYPES EXPLAINED” by the Fung Bros. I felt a weird combination of relief and resignation when UC ...
Back in January, when I first saw Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the world felt different. The world was different. Coronavirus hadn’t been identified in the States yet. “Social distancing” ...
How does one define sexuality? Ask a million different people, and you’d probably get a million different answers. It’s only been a few years since sexual fluidity has become a widely accepted concept, but even ...
One of the first things that you should know about the romantic drama I Will Make You Mine, actress-turned-director Lynn Chen’s debut film, is that it’s part of a long withstanding trilogy. Following up Danny ...
Watching Carol Nguyen’s short film “No Crying at the Dinner Table” as a child of Asian immigrants is an uncomfortable, queasy experience–if only because it touches upon a familiar sense of stoicism that haunts many ...
Growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles County, I’ve occasionally wondered what the story was behind those local Asian-owned mom and pop donut shops that were never more than a five-minute drive away. They ...
In recent years, there’s been a small wave of domestic horror films whose source of terror comes from within. Rather than being haunted by a monster or a psycho killer, the threat instead comes from ...
When writer-director Danny Madden was asked about why he decided to create Beast Beast, a film based off of his SXSW winning short “Krista,” he mentioned how working with lead actress Shirley Chen largely drove ...
Someone in the front row was snoring. Forty minutes into the film, the sound of heavy exhales from the audience slowly but surely grew to a crescendo a few scenes later. At first, it was ...
It’s often such a shame that shorts programs generally get shafted by the general nature of film festivals. That’s just usually how it goes. Next to feature-length films directed by more established filmmakers and the ...