2023 Short Film Showcase
Join us in celebrating the Short Films made by Asian & Asian American filmmakers! This showcase features films and filmmakers you won't want to miss!
There will be Q&As after the showcase so you can get to know our local talent!
Q&A Following the Showcase with moderator Roma Sur!
Roma Sur is a screenwriter and a documentary filmmaker, with twelve years of teaching Screenwriting. Sur is delighted to be a programing curator, on the Dragon Boat Film Festival committee, 2023.
Sur found her niche in narrating cross-cultural stories that channel her Asian American immigrant experience of living in the US for twenty years, and her childhood in cosmopolitan India. She comes from a family of fierce independent women, and they often form the core of her writing. Sur writes young adult and female driven dramas with levity.
Her most recent project, a 38 minute documentary, titled MAA, had its Colorado premiere at Dragon Boat Film Festival, 2022. Her documentary titled Three Worlds One Stage is currently streaming on Amazon and iTunes among other digital platforms.
Sur currently teaches Screenwriting and Film Production at the University of Denver's Media, Film and Journalism department.
SHORT FILMS
Run Time: 2 hours
Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya Findings | Meow Wolf
Culture Highlighted: Asian American
Created by Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation, FINDINGS is a mural series that highlights women in STEM who uncover new insights about our worlds in the fields of dark matter, climate change, condensed matter physics, exoplanets, and more. She is currently in the process of completing ten murals across the country, which serve as tributes to women depicted as vital, powerful, and wondrous. In the near future, FINDINGS will launch a free augmented reality (AR) mobile app for iOS and Android that will allow visitors to have a deeper experience, seeing 3D animations and additional context on the science and story behind the art. To learn more about findings go to findingsproject.com.
Directed by Lava B. Khonsuwon and Noor-un-nisa Touchon
One Fine Day
a Group Project Filmmaking Collective music video
Culture Highlighted: Japanese American & Opera
Synopsis
One Fine Day shows a visual narrative in contrast with the status quo of opera MADAMA BUTTERFLY. Using the famous aria, “Un bel di” (One Fine Day), we reframe the meaning of the piece to show the strength and value of Asian and Asian American women beyond that of the established stereotypes. We hope to share this film widely to raise awareness of pervasive violence against Asian women, as well as the dangers wrapped up in the portrayal of Asian women in a stereotypical and fetishizing way.
Soon
Culture Highlighted: Middle Eastern American
Usama Alshaibi was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1969 and spent his formative years living between the United States and the Middle East.
This is footage of me as a boy before the war. I was thinking about Super 8mm film and my own childhood and all these home movies my father shot and then transferred to a variety of video tapes and systems, and how those moving images mutate and glitch into its own form. The transformation is part of it, the memory, the pain and the history manifesting visually.
Amache Rose
Culture Highlighted: Asian American
A rose grows in the high desert of Colorado, where it has no business growing. Planted 80 years ago by incarcerees of the Amache Japanese Internment camp.
Come see this amazing documentary that was created right here in Colorado that talks about OUR HISTORY.
More information coming soon.
Dirty Rotten Tofu & the Gohan Girls
Culture Highlighted: Asian American
In 1880’s Colorado, we meet the three western heroines, Sushi, Mochi, and Ume on the run from bounty hunters hired by their former captor, Tofu, a ruthless crime boss in Denver’s Chinatown. They realize there is
only one way to permanently gain their freedom-- kill Tofu.
The overconfident Sushi directs Mochi and Ume to keep the bounty hunters busy while she returns to Denver to kill the dirty, rotten sonavabitch. Mochi looks upon this plan skeptically. Ume, who can’t speak, angrily rides away on her horse in disgust.
Will this plan succeed, fail or ultimately kill them all?
Paddles on the Water
Culture Highlighted: Dragon Boating
Paddles On The Water immerses the audience in the world of women’s Dragon Boating. Through the stories of coaches and paddlers of Wasabi Paddling Club Women’s Program, a world-renowned team from the Pacific Northwest, the viewer experiences firsthand the power of 20 women paddling together in perfect unison. Paddlers share the life altering experience of finding their sport amidst a diverse and supportive community regardless of their age, background, or athletic ability. Through their stories we discover what a multi-generational team of female athletes can achieve and just how far they can go together. Paddles On The Water features exhilarating race footage from the 2018 and 2019 race season. We follow the team through training, to small local races, to Nationals, and all the way to World Championships in Szeged, Hungary. As paddles glide across rippling water, the collective ethos, the drive, and the interconnectedness of the women in the boat shines through.
Thread
Culture Highlighted: Vietnamese American
A woman looks back on the thread of memory of past Lunar New Years (Tết).