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Asian Film Database

Daddy Tran: A life in 3-D (2008)

47min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English, Vietnamese
Director/Filmmaker: Siu Ta (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Film
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: In 2002, 65-year-old photographer Hai Tran fell in love with 3-D photography and is on a mission to share its wonders with as many people as possible. His passion for photography began as a child in Vietnam, continued when he fled with his young family in a small boat with three cameras and a suitcase of photographs, and culminated in Calgary where he eventually opened one of Canada's largest vintage camera stores. Director Siu Ta reveals the history of the family through Hai's wonderful photos as well as intimate and funny stories from his wife and children. Ta captures Hai's ebullience when a moose poses for his camera, his joy as he shows his work to strangers and his sadness as he is forced to close the store. Hai's charisma, volatile personality and love for photography light up this film. (HotDOCS)
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Dairy Queens (2003)

4min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Karylnn ming Ho (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: A gutsy performance art piece involving ice-cream – and lots of it – outside a Dairy Queen store in downtown Calgary. You'll never look at dairy products the same way again.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Dalmatian Tie (1992)

25min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Sandy Ng (Hong Kong)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: A story of hygiene and superstition, Dalmatian Tie follows a relationship in decline. Oscillating between venomous intimacy and wrathful dependency, the narrative features unstable memories, lingual deficiencies as well as a tyrannical narrator. (Vtape)
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Damascus Nights (1998)

17min. Short, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Ruba Nadda (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: In a busy café, an Arab man tells stories to his uninterested young daughter. (IMDb)
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Dan Carter (2006)

15min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Alison S.M Kobayashi (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Dan Carter donated his answering machine to a secondhand store. Dan Carter did not remove the cassette tape. So the filmmaker took it. This film is based on the messages. (Alison S.M. Kobayashi)
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Dana (2007)

83min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Cuong Ngo (Vietnam)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:
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David Cronenberg - Artist's Profile (1990)

Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Midi Onodera (Canada)
Production Company: Toronto Arts Award Foundation
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Commissioned by the Toronto Arts Award Foundation to honour David Cronenberg, this artist profile locates the director within the space of his own work. Using clips from such classics as Videodrome, The Fly and Dead Ringers, this short both references Cronenberg's work and allows the director to shed some light on some of his cinematic obsessions. (midionodera.com)
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Davie Street Blues

12min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): Cantonese
Director/Filmmaker: Wayne Yung (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: After his boyfriend leaves, a young man is lost in nostalgia and depression until a mute street kid tries to distract him from his melancholy. A moody and romantic homage to the film noir of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai. (wayneyung.com)
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The Day A Pig Fell Into The Well (1996)

115min. Drama, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Hung Sang-soo (Korea)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Tong-u, a plain married man in his thirties, visits Chônju (4 hour bus ride from Seoul) on a business trip. After endless incidents of waiting, his purpose continually frustrated, he has to spend the night in this strange place and has a disengaging encounter with a prostitute which however leaves him with 'consequences' due to a ruptured condom. (IMDB)
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Daypass (2002)

13min. Comedy, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Deborah Chow (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: United States
Summary: A dead but undying romantic returns from the grave to further pursue the love of his life. (IMDb)
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Days of Blinding Fear (2010)

min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Randall Lloyd Okita (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:
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Dead Zone (1985)

3min. Avant-garde, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Midi Onodera (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Images, repetitive in visual completion, combine with a popular music track and self-acknowledging voice-over to form a void of numbed loneliness and dissatisfaction. (femfilm.ca)
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Death Threat (1998)

19min. Comedy, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Zarqa Nawaz (England)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: A comic farce about Yasmeen Siddiqui, a young Muslim woman. She has just written her first novel and can't understand why no less than 59 publishers would reject a romantic epic like "The Unquenched Wench of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan." Thinking perhaps she is not controversial enough, Yasmeen sets out to exploit her sweet-natured fellow Muslims in order to get a death threat in the hopes of generating publicity. (www.zarqanawaz.com)
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The Decrepit (2011)

23min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Mani Amar (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Addicts tell their stories to Mani Amar, who acted as his own cinematographer and can be heard off-camera asking the questions. The interviews take place in the alleys of the run-down area of downtown Vancouver, often described as Canada's poorest neighbourhood. (http://maniamar.com)
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Defeena (2012)

5min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Marlene Miller & Philip Szporer (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Bharata natyam is a modern take on one of the oldest classical forms in India. This dance was choreographed by Natasha Bakht, and adapted for this site-specific film shot in a crystal mine and abandoned copper quarry.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Defense Mechanism

19min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): English, Japanese, French
Director/Filmmaker: Alison S.M. Kobayashi (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: France
Summary: This film is the documentation of a live performance by A.S.M.Kobayashi with Christopher Allen in 2012. In her French debut, Kobayashi invites us into her imagination through her one woman show, produced especially for Ca Tremble. Kobayashi combines consumer security surveillance technology with her ensemble of characters and a collection of tenderly-curated narratives. This performance was developed at a 2012 residency at Les Subsistances, Lyon France. (Vtape)
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Delilah Jukebox (2014)

18min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Stephen Chen (Singapore)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The film toys with the notion of loops, repetition and dichotomy like the A-B sides of a vinyl record. Delilah is not just a woman, she is the embodiment and projection of fear and fantasy; her name conjures diverse images and prejudices of the lover, the traitor, the fallen woman, the temptress, the patriot, and the vengeful, etc. Through a series of repetitions of Delilah's aria "Printemps qui commence" (from the opera Samson et Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns) in a series of domestic spaces, male mezzo Stephen Chen explores the representation of the feminine by deconstructing and re-imagining Delilah. (CFMDC)
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Delivery Day (2000)

26min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Jane Manning (Australia)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: For 11-year-old Trang, it's going to be one of those days - she has to get her Vietnamese mother to attend her school's parent-teacher interview but it also happens to be delivery day for the garments in her mother's sweatshop and her mum is way too busy. DELIVERY DAY is an insight into the world of duck eggs, Toyota Celicas and outworkers, which explores both generations of the Vietnamese migrant experience through the eyes of a young girl. It is one of the few Australian dramas to depict Vietnamese Australians. (Letterboxd)
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Devious (2013)

8min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Shehzeb Iftakhar (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:

In a moment of glory, a young Asian hip-hop artist ruminates on the obstacles he's faced on his way up.

Source: Reel Asian

 

Diamondback (2008)

5min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Nicaragua
Summary: A couple of bumbling guys on a dark road in Nicaragua spot a snake. They bound after the serpent that has slithered into the tall grass. Using bare hands they seize the Diamondback Rattler. (Vtape)
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Diane Chea (2009)

10min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Diann Chea (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: In an absurd quest to find Diane Chea, the woman whose medical file became mixed up with hers, an artist struggles with her own unique name—Diann—and her Cambodian and Chinese heritages.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Dishonour Defied (2007)

57min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English, Urdu
Director/Filmmaker: Azra Rashid (Pakistan)
Production Company: Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Canadian Independent Film & Video Fund and Seneca College of Toronto.
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Pakistan
Summary: In 2005, a woman was gang raped in a remote village in Pakistan. Unlike many women before her, Mukhtar Mai decided to confront her assailants. She defied the conventional thinking and fought back. She took her battle to the highest courts in Pakistan. Mai became an international figure and now runs schools for children in her native village. Dishonour Defied is the story of how Mai made a life with courage after the tragedy that befell her. It's also the story of other women and girls struggling for their rights in Pakistan in the wake of the Mai case. (www.tamarackproductions.com)
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Disoriental (2014)

2min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): No Sound
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong (Canada)
Production Company: Paul Wong Projects
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Film
Awards:  
Setting: France
Summary: Is he here or there, in China, Canada or France? The 'other' being in and out of place.
Dressed in white, wearing a bamboo sun hat and barefoot, and in dark glasses, Wong materializes himself at the entrance of the Saint-Etienne Bridge in Limoges, France on a clear summer day. Walking seemingly disorientated he navigates using an iPad screen as a spatiotemporal window on his digital journey. This work was created for Digital Visions, an exhibition and online project curated by Systaime.
15 international artists were invited to create new digital works responding to 15 different sites in Limousin. Each responded to the city via an online perspective, utilizing different web based platforms to explore and create new works. (paulwongprojects.com)
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Displaced View (1988)

52min. Avant-garde, documentary, fiction, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Midi Onodera (Canada)
Production Company: Ontario Film Development Corporation, The Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Secretary of State, Multiculturalism
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards: Nomination, Best Documentary, Gemini Awards, 1989; Special Citation, Gemini Multicultural Awards, 1989; Honourable Mention, Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, 1988
Setting:  
Summary: The Displaced View traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history, are revealed. Utilizing an innovative combination of experimental, dramatic and documentary forms, the film emerges as a deeply moving and compassionate love letter. Just as the official history of the Japanese Canadians has been thrown into question, so does the film's fictionalized narrative, question documentary as truth. (www.metrocinema.org)
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Disposable Lez (2000)

83min. Short, Colour
Language(s): Japanese
Director/Filmmaker: Desiree Lim (Malaysia)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Japan
Summary: A black comedy about a dyke in Tokyo who's always out of luck in romance. (Desiree Lim)
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DO GOOD (2009)

11min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Alison S.M. Kobayashi (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: The filmmaker catalogued her family's home video collection and came across videos of Brownie and Girl Guide ceremonies featuring the filmmaker and her sister. (Alison S.M. Kobayashi)
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Do Nothing (1997)

4min. Short, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Ruba Nadda (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: A 12-year-old girl stands on a street corner and asks the men who pass if they think she is beautiful. (femfilm.ca)
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Do Wok A Do! (2000)

15min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Michelle Wong (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Set in the the 70s in a small town in northern Alberta, this beautifully shot and scripted film builds powerful silences around a lover's triangle that troubles a family, but not the sky high dreams of a little girl.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Do You Like It Here? (1998)

6min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Mahmoud Yekta (Australia)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: "Do you like it here?"- a simple question, loaded with implication. (Reel Asian)
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Documenting Dissent (2001)

6min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Ali Kazimi (India)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: This film investigates the filmmaker's account of racial profiling and targeting of independent media during the anti-FTAA protest in Quebec City in April 2001.
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Dog Eat Dog (2008)

7min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The muse performs Dog Eat Dog. In altered and real-time he presents a dark and light side of innocence. (www.5.paulwongprojects.com)
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Doh! Oh Dear, A Female Tear (2013)

12min. Documentary, Experimental, Colour, Black and White
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Stephen Chen (Singapore)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Exerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Using the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. (CFMDC)
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Domino (1994)

45min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Shanti Thakur (Canada)
Production Company: National Film Board of Canada
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards: Bronze Apple, National Educational Film Media Network, Oakland
Setting: Canada
Summary: Domino portrays the poignant and outspoken stories of six multiracial adults' struggles to transcend cultural boundaries and forge their own identities. By virtue of their experience, they explore how society categorizes "race". Domino reveals how these women and men have used their experience as a psychological, creative and cultural enrichment. (National Film Board of Canada)
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Double Concerto (1998)

5min. Animation, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Kwan Ho Tse (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Centering around a modern ballet piece shot on location, parallel cut with the same footage being edited on a flatbed, this multi-disciplinary project involves not only music, dance and film, but new ways of looking at them.
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Double Happiness (1994)

87min. Fiction, Colour
Language(s): English, Cantonese
Director/Filmmaker: mina Shum (Hong Kong)
Production Company: First Generation Films, National Film Board of Canada
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards: Wolfgang Staudte Prize for Best First Feature, Berlin Film Festival; Audience Award, Torino International Festival of Young Cinema; Best Canadian Feature Film, Toronto International Film Festival.
Setting: Canada
Summary: Jade Li is a 22-year-old aspiring actress looking for love and her place in the world. Like so many members of Generation X, she's culture bound. What's worse is she still lives at home with her Chinese family. Jade seeks Double Happiness, a way to keep loving her family deeply, while exploring the possibilities and the pain of a young woman growing up in the nineties. As Jade struggles to maintain the balance of her two worlds, she must answer the question she's been trying to avoid: you've got one life to live, what's it gonna be? (femfilm.ca)
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Dovetale (2010)

3min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): No Sound
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong and Tony Pantages (Canada)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards: Winner, Best in Category: Urban Ideas and Politics, Toronto Urban Film Festival, 2010.
Setting: Canada
Summary: This video is a mixing together of Pantages' implosion of a longtime downtown east side landmark: the Woodwards building, with Wong's Downtown Eastside alleys. (www.5.paulwongprojects.com)
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Downside Up (2008)

Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Azam Fouk Aladeh (Syria)
Production Company: Multicultural Cinema Club, Kitchener-Waterloo
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Youth homelessness in Kitchener, Ontario
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Downtown Eastside (2010)

8min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong (Canada)
Production Company: Paul Wong Projects
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The Downtown Eastside is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Brtish Columbia and is known as 'Canada's poorest postal code'. The area is noted for not only for its poverty but rife with open drug use, sex trade, crime, homelessness, HIV and mental health issues, and all the community activism that comes with trying to fix the problems. The artist records everyday activities in the streets and alleys around the Main and Hasting Street intersection. The work was presented as part of 'Everybody is Somebody', a multimedia event at Pigeon Park in 2007 and as part of 'Five Elements' at Sun Yat-Sen Gardens as part of '5', a series of site-specific events commissioned by the City of Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Projects. (paulwongprojects.com)
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Dowsing (1996)

16min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Kim Yun-tae (Korea)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Dowsing refers to a search for a vein of water in the earth with a divining rod. Sketches from a day in the life of an unusual girl, a day when all her daily routines seem condensed into one solitary dream. (Reel Asian)
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Draghoula (1995)

85min. Horror,
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Bashar Shbib (Syria)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Harry (Chriss Lee) is a young, Jewish scientist who lives with his overprotective and overbearing mother. He spends most of his time in his laboratory trying to isolate the guilt gene, using live rats for his tests. When the laboratory administration announces a major budget cut, he can no longer afford the number of rats he needs to continue his research. But Harry does not despair; he finds an agency that supplies rats from Transylvania at a very low price. When he is bitten by one of these specimens, his quiet life takes quite a radical turn… (www.oneira.com)
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The Dreaming House (2005)

6min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Keith Lock (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:

The filmmaker's father and youngest child walk past the tiny house in Chinatown where his father was born, triggering a sublime moment.

Source: Reel Asian

 

Drinking Games (2004)

82min. Action, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Bashar Shbib (Syria)
Production Company: Oneira Pictures International
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: According to the beautiful and mysterious Darcy (Anna Jaeger), fear is the only thing that can prevent us from creating better alternatives. In seeking to prove her point, she decides to organize a drinking game. To succeed, the only question is to what extent the player is prepared to approach death. (www.oneira.com)
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Drive, She Said (1997)

81min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: mina Shum (Hong Kong)
Production Company: 47 Films, Canada Television and Cable Production Fund, Telefilm Canada - Equity Investment Program
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The story of a Chinese-American woman that is willingly taken hostage by a bank robber and accompanies him cross country to visit his ailing mother and her estranged family. (IMDb)
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A Drummer's Passion (2011)

12min. Uncategorized
Language(s): English/Korean (English subtitles)
Director/Filmmaker: mingu Kim (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:

A 70-year-old South Korean legend, Kwon Soon Keun, is an explosive drummer who is famous for his wild and extraordinary showmanship.

Source: Reel Asian

 

Dyke: Just Be It (1999)

2min. Short, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Desiree Lim (Malaysia)
Production Company:
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Japan
Summary: A subversive spin on Nike ads "Just do it" to celebrate the pride and visibility a Japanese queer women. (Desiree Lim)
Source:  

 

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