Category Archives: documentary

Beautiful Sisters : short documentary

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Beautiful Sisters : short documentary

Intersecting race, gender and beauty, Beautiful Sisters examines blepharoplasty, known as eyelid surgery, and prominent amongst Asians and Asian American women. The film aims to untangle a web of controversy involving Western influences, societal beauty standards, preservation of culture, and choices of the individual. Through research, interviews and a personal narrative, Beautiful Sisters provides a closer look at how we perceive and construct ideas about beauty, racial and gender identity.

See these other videos about Asian Eyelid surgery: Asian Eyelid Surgery : Erase Your Race? on The Doctors, Asians seeking surgery to look Western, Western Eyes, and eyelid surgery for high schoolers.

Beautiful Sisters : short documentary

More about Beautiful Sisters
Beautiful Sisters premiered at the 25th Annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and has screened at the Asian American International Film Festival in New York City, the Arab American National Museum, UC Berkeleys Women of Color in Arts Festival, and the Pacific Film Archive. The film received Honorable Mention for the Eisner Prize, UC Berkeleys award for the arts.

Wayne Wang Outtakes from These Amazing Shadows documentary

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Wayne Wang Outtakes from These Amazing Shadows documentary

Director Wayne Wang has some interesting thought in his outtakes for the documentary, ‘These Amazing Shadows.’ The director of ‘Chan is Missing,’ ‘The Joy Luck Club’ and ‘Maid in Manhattan,’ talks about the depiction of Chinese characters in American movies – and it’s affect on him. His film ‘Chan is Missing’ was selected to the National Film Registry in 1995.

“These Amazing Shadows” is a documentary about the National Film Registry and the power of the movies.
Films liste in the The National Film Registry have been deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress. The 88-minute documentary, tells the history and importance of the Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself. “These Amazing Shadows” reveals how “American movies tell us so much about ourselves… not just what we did, but what we thought, what we felt, what we aspired to, and the lies we told ourselves.

Wayne Wang Outtakes from These Amazing Shadows documentary

Children of the Trains trailer

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Children of the Trains trailer

Filmmaker Barbara Grandvoinet has been working on a documentary for the past 5 years. This documentary presents an inspiring story of transformation. Junk-yard train cars become locations of learning and abandoned street children become hopeful youth. In 1999, Railway Police Commander Jarumporn Suramanee requested to use abandoned train cars to teach homeless children basic skills. It has now become a collective effort by the Railway Police to serve, protect, shelter, and educate homeless children living in Bangkok. The library train has become a home base, as well as a transition point, for homeless street children and troubled youth who live in and around Bangkok. The film follows the daily encounters of the street children and the cops. It brings to light the daily struggle the cops face to feed, clothe, and educate the children, and the battle to make their teaching sustainable for the children and for themselves.

Children of the Trains trailer

Home For Hermit : short film

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Home For Hermit : short film

Filmmaker Vincent Trinh reflects about his life in his Vietnamese American Memoir “Home For Hermit”. It’s a short documentary about finding a sense of home and belonging. His immigrant experience from Vietnam to the United States shows the differences between the two cultures as he shares his thoughts of where his home is. The film has picked up wins at the UC Davis Asian American Film Festival 2011 and the UC Davis Film Festival 2011 “Honorable Mention” Award.

Home For Hermit : short film

My Comic Shop DocumentARy Trailer

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My Comic Shop DocumentARy Trailer

In 1992, Steve Oto embarked upon a journey from lawyer to comic book retailer. It has been a journey filled with accomplishment and disappointment, friendship and heartbreak, and a dream that became a nightmare. My Comic Shop DocumentARy is an independent, feature-length documentary film about the community that calls Alternate Realities home–a community more colorful than even the pages of a comic book. “My Comic Shop DocumentARy” is an independent, feature-length film shining a light on the colorful community that calls one New York comic shop home.

My Comic Shop DocumentARy Trailer

(thanks to Asian on YouTube for the tip)

Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker

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Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker

Korehira Watanabe is one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths. He has spent 40 years honing his craft in an attempt to recreate Koto, a type of sword that dates back to the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1333 AD). No documents remain to provide context for Watanabe’s quest, but he believes he has come close to creating a replica of this mythical samurai sword.

Watch more short films based on Japanese culture: Karakuri : short documentary and Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker