Saturday School Podcast

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Season 8, Ep. 10: Hope Frozen Sep 01, 2022

Show notes

We’ve arrived at the last episode of Saturday School Season 8, which explored the history of Asian American sci-fi films! And we end this semester of boundary-pushing imagination with a… documentary! Pailin Wedel’s “Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice” from 2018, which is available to watch on Netflix.

“Hope Frozen” is about a Thai family who decide to have their two-year-old daughter Einz’s body cryogenically preserved in Arizona after she dies of brain cancer. Arguably an Asian American immigration story?

While to some, it may seem like they're embarking on a fringe pseudoscience -- or alternately, that they're forcing their daughter to be a time traveler -- the film is a quiet mediation on family, love and grief. It's a scientific quest passed along from father to son (who of course is named Matrix) to accelerate, perhaps even invent, the technology to give Einz a second chance at life. She is the youngest cryopreserved patient to date.

One of the reasons this season of sci-fi has been illuminating is because Asian American cinema often values authenticity, a natural reaction from a community that has seen their images distorted in Hollywood. But with recent films like "Everything Everywhere All At Once" and "After Yang," there seems to be a hunger for Asian American stories that may seem impossible or dare to rewrite the future.

It’s been 6 years since we started Saturday School: Sept 8, 2016 to be exact. The landscape of Asian American cinema has changed a lot since then. Thanks for listening, reading and joining us on this journey!

Season 8, Ep. 9: Advantageous (Futurestates Part 3) Aug 28, 2022

Show notes

Where were we going with a Saturday School season delving into the history of Asian American sci-fi? In some ways, all episodes prior were leading up to Jennifer Phang's "Advantageous," a 2015 feature film that started as a 2012 short film in the Futurestates series.

Often, Asian Americans and other people of color in Hollywood sci-fi represent a post-racial future. But what if in near future, these inequities are not gone but intensified?

Jacqueline Kim (who co-wrote the feature film expansion with Phang) plays Gwen, the spokesperson of a cosmetics company that wants to replace her with someone more "universal," just as she needs the money to send her daughter Jules (Samantha Kim) to an elite school.

Gwen, a single mother, believes this is Jules' only shot at a decent future in a world where society is collapsing. So in order to keep her job, she volunteers to be one of the first subjects for a procedure that will transfer her consciousness into a new, younger (less-Asian) body.

"Advantageous " won an award at Sundance, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and is available to watch on Netflix.

Season 8, Ep. 8: Futurestates (Part 2) Aug 20, 2022

Show notes

On this week’s Saturday School, we’re continuing our exploration of Asian American sci-fi with a second episode on Futurestates, a groundbreaking sci-fi short film series spearheaded by Karim Ahmad that ran from 2010 to 2014 on public television and online.

Before Black Mirror was another anthology series set in the future, Futurestates gave directors – including many notable Asian American filmmakers - opportunities to tell unique stories that imagined the future. Last week, we looked at Greg Pak’s short films, and this week, we delve into Tanuj Chopra’s shorts “Pia” and “Teacher in a Box,” and J.P. Chan’s “Digital Antiquities.”

“Pia” takes place in a futuristic San Francisco where robots are named Pia – and played by Pia Shah. “Teacher in a Box” explores a relationship between a teacher (Rebecca Hazlewood) and a student (Sarika Sanyal) who mostly converse through virtual reality but find reasons to connect in the real world. And “Digital Antiquities,” starring Jo Mei and Corey Hawkins, takes place in a future where CDs are antiquated and a man finds the only store that can help him decode the data his mom left for him after she died.

Watching these shorts ten years later, many aspects of these stories seem uncannily similar to our current reality.

Season 8, Ep. 7: Futurestates (Part 1 with Greg Pak) Jul 04, 2022

Show notes

Throughout this season of Saturday School, we've been exploring the history of Asian American sci-fi films. So far, we've mostly focused on indie films from the 1980s to 2000s that overcame limited budgets and technologies to show what creative genre storytelling about Asian Americans could look like.

Where was it leading? What would be possible if there was some organized funding around these stories? In 2010, the public TV and web series FutureStates, spearheaded by Karim Ahmad, commissioned filmmakers to create short films that imagined today's social issues in tomorrow's America.

We're going to spend the next 3 episodes on FutureStates, starting with an interview with director Greg Pak, who was one of many Asian American directors who were asked to participate in the series.

Greg Pak writes comics for both Marvel and DC - everything from the Hulk, Hercules, Darth Vader, Batman, Superman to Amadeus Cho. But because we are Saturday School, we spend all of our time talking to him about "Robot Stories" - which we started this season with! - and his FutureStates shorts.

"Mister Green" stars Tim Kang as a government official who has failed to prevent the worst case scenarios of climate change. "Happy Fun Room" stars Cindy Cheung as a traumatized kids' show host trying (unsuccessfully) to warn the children of dangerous robot uprisings outside.

Season 8, Ep. 6: Lumpia and Lumpia with a Vengeance Jun 05, 2022

Show notes

Before "Shang-Chi," before "Ms. Marvel," Asian American film gave us the superhero Lumpia Man. On the latest episode of Saturday School (where this season we're exploring Asian American sci-fi), we revisit "Lumpia" (2003) and its sequel "Lumpia with a Vengeance" (2020).

"Lumpia" was shot in director Patricio Ginelsa's hometown of Daly City with his high school friends. In this comic book movie, narrated by Joy Bisco of "The Debut," the Americanized Filipinos are bullying the Filipino FOBs. But luckily, the FOBs are protected by Lumpia Man, a silent teenager whose weapon is lumpia.

It's a charming time capsule of NorCal Fil-Am culture in the 90s, with the DJs, house parties, karaoke and K-mart. The home-made film developed enough of a cult following that Ginelsa ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund a sequel about decades later. He got the old crew back together, added some trained actors (including Danny Trejo) and built out a larger "Lumpia" cinematic universe with a new generation of characters.

Season 8, Ep. 5: Two Lies May 15, 2022

Show notes

We're back to continue Season 8 of Saturday School, where we're exploring the roots of Asian American science fiction films.

This week, we're thinking about movies like "Frankenstein," "Face/Off" or "Eyes Without a Face' -- plastic-surgery-gone-wrong films. So we are revisiting Pamela Tom's 1990 short film "Two Lies." It's from the point of view of a Chinese American teenager and her younger sister. Their mom recently left their dad, and she decides to get eyelid surgery as part of her "new grip on life." She's wearing sunglasses and secluding herself in the bathroom to hide the bandages around her eyes. She's dating a white man who's passionate about "the Orient" and calls her "Lotus Bud." She even talks differently.

Is it a scientific experiment with horrific consequences, or just a regular procedure? As common as getting braces, their mother insists!

Season 8, Ep. 4: Fresh Kill Jan 02, 2022

Show notes

On Ep. 4 of Saturday School Season 8 (looking at Asian American sci-fi), we're talking about Shu Lea Cheang's 1994 experimental film, Fresh Kill. Shareen (Sarita Choudhury) and Claire (Erin McMurtry) are drawn into a corporate conspiracy when their daughter eats contaminated fish, her head glows green and she disappears. The same evil conglomerate controlling the internet & TV is also making radioactive cat food that is killing cats. But a sushi chef/hacker (Abraham Lim), a poet/dishwasher (José Zúñiga) and Claire's mom (Laurie Carlos), a public access host/activist, are working with them to expose the company.

The film is written by Jessica Hagedorn, the playwright/author known for Dogeaters, and sometimes it feels like theater or spoken-word poetry. Other times it feels like someone with no attention span flipping through channels or TikTok/Instagram stories.

Fresh Kill comes out of a time in 80s/90s New York when artists, activists, poets & filmmakers were trying to blow up categories of gender, sexuality and race. It was a time when casting people of color was called non-traditional casting.

Another queer Asian American film of that time, Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet," is about negotiating with your parents. Fresh Kill negotiates with no one. It's available to watch online as part of the "My Sight is Lined with Visions" retrospective until Jan. 25.

Season 8, Ep. 3: The Laser Man Nov 15, 2021

Show notes

This week on Saturday School, we continue our season on Asian American sci-fi with the 1988 film "The Laser Man." What happens when an immigrant actor/director (Peter Wang) who's been one of the faces of burgeoning Asian American cinema in the 1980s (with the seminal indie "Chan is Missing" and "A Great Wall," the first US feature to be shot in China) just wants to make a zany, nonsensical detective parody about killer lasers?

And he brings together Asian American actors like Marc Hayashi (also of "Chan is Missing"), some famous connections in Hong Kong cinema (Tsui Hark, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Sally Yeh) and up-and-coming American filmmakers like Ernest Dickerson and Christine Vachon)?

The result is something probably too strange and cringe-y for 1988, but arguably hilarious for 2021. Full of illogical hijinks and (we think) made-up Confucius sayings, this is another episode where we tell you about a movie you can't really watch because we want you to know that this happened. In 1988. With much more brazen confidence (to be weird) that we even get to see now in Asian America.

Season 8, Ep. 2: Nam June Paik Aug 29, 2021

Show notes

For Saturday School Season 8, we are exploring Asian American sci-fi films. In this episode we explore the genre's prehistory, diving into the robots, Buddha livestreams, and fantastic futures of video artist Nam June Paik. We took a field trip up to SFMOMA, which is presenting a massive retrospective of Paik's work, on display until October 3.

Paik is considered the pioneer of video art, and is credited with coining the term "electronic superhighway" in 1974, basically predicting the internet. So for episode 2, we get lost in his vision of a technological future. He was all about breaking down barriers between low art and high art, bringing sexuality and shenanigans into classical music, and stitching together the real and the virtual, leading to such oddities as TV cellos, TV bras, TV glasses, TV chairs and TV gardens. As a Korean educated in Japan and Germany before coming to the U.S., he also resisted labels of nationality and proposed through his art a more utopic global vision of the future.

Season 8, Ep. 1: Robot Stories Jul 25, 2021

Show notes

It's the year 2021. Asian Americans have survived the apocalypse, but as we emerge as a community blamed for the deadly virus, are we the villains, are we the misunderstood heroes or are we the robots? To help us figure it out, we're exploring Asian American sci-fi films for our 8th season of Saturday School.

This is not a season about Hollywood sci-fi films with Asian Americans in it. For that, please listen to All The Asians On Star Trek, Marvel and Makeup, Nerds of Color -- anyone but Brian & I, who are laughably ignorant about a lot of mainstream sci-fi.

We're looking at films where Asian Americans were the auteurs, so for the most part, indie films, experimental faire. Stories that imagine alternate versions of Asian America, dare us to break out of our boxes and think of other possibilities.

We start this season talking about techno-Orientalism, how Hollywood sci-fi often portrays Asian spaces without any Asian people. Or if we exist, we are emerging superpowers to defeat.

As a contrast to typical Hollywood sci-fi films, we begin our new season of Saturday School revisiting Greg Pak's 2003 film Robot Stories, "science fiction from the heart."

Here, robots (and Asian Americans) are not something to fear; instead, something to love. Robots are the babies we are learning to take care of, a source of healing during a tragedy, the hero of the story who just needs a friend, and a way to connect with lost loved ones, even if it's complicated.

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