Hi guys, here is a light one. Chef’s Table is an American documentary web series released on Netflix. Each episode of the series profiles a single world-renowned chef. Creator David Gelb considers it a follow-up to his critically acclaimed documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Enjoy
“Shotgun Joe,” a 1973 educational film, introduced Joe Scanlon, a wordy misfit then doing time in a Connecticut Correctional Facility. Joey Onions goes behind the scenes with producer Joel Levitch, who updates Scanlon’s story over forty years later. Directed by Adam Humphreys.
When he was six-years-old, Dinesh Das Sabu’s parents died. Raised by his older siblings, he had little idea who his parents were or where he came from. Through making UNBROKEN GLASS, he attempts to piece together their story and his own. Uncovering a silenced family history and disturbing truths, Dinesh and his siblings must finally reconcile the past, confronting the trauma of losing their parents and the specter of mental illness.
UNBROKEN GLASS weaves together Das Sabu’s journey of discovery with cinema-verite scenes of his family dealing with still raw emotions and consequences of his immigrant parents’ lives and deaths. The film was shot over five years in Illinois, New Mexico, California, and India.Follow thebrownstigama.tumblr.com
Amazing documentary on trauma.
(Source: youtube.com, via unfairandlovely)
Did you recently learn that getting a Chinese symbol tattoo or wearing the bindi offends some Asian folks, but don’t know why? You want to be sensitive to other cultures but at the same time want to know what’s wrong if you’re just appreciating it?
This documentary is a good starting point for you.
In a nutshell, the same thing that you ‘appreciate’ for aesthetics, is same thing Asian Americans were ridiculed (at best) and killed (at worst) for. When you commodify an aspect of someone’s heritage you are devaluing its meaning that took centuries of generations to develop.
yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool — is produced by a group of undergraduates at UC-Berkeley in 2000. It interviews Asian activists, people on the street, show owners and others who feel passionate about the topic.
(Source: vimeo.com)
zuky:
I caught the documentary Speaking In Tongues on PBS a few days ago, which explores the politics and practicalities of multilingual early education in the USA today, through the lives of four school kids in California whose parents have enrolled them in full immersion schools where most subjects, from math to social sciences, are taught in Chinese or Spanish.
The film’s four subjects include an African American boy attending Mandarin immersion who strikes up conversations in department stores with older Chinese speakers, and whose mother believes her son’s language skills will offer him more opportunities in life; a Mexican American boy attending Spanish immersion who already speaks perfect English but whose parents speak only Spanish; a Chinese American girl attending Cantonese immersion who can communicate with her Cantonese-speaking grandmother while her own parents have lost their Chinese through assimilation; and a white teenage boy attending Mandarin immersion who once asked his parents if he was Chinese, and who travels to China in the film to further his linguistic and cultural immersion.
It’s an even-handed, well-constructed look at an issue which is obviously close to home for many of us. The film argues that early multilingual education helps children even beyond language skills, stimulating cognitive development and improving abilities in other fields such as math and music. Also, since languages are most easily learned before the age of 13, it argues that US society shoots itself in the foot economically by purging second languages from early education and then investing millions of dollars in quasi-teaching second languages to college kids, even as the globalized US economy, as well as the national security state, are desperate to recruit people who speak multiple languages.
Obviously I agree with these notions. Personally I grew up with Mandarin at home, English in the school yard and on TV, and French immersion in public elementary school in Montreal. Multilingualism always seemed perfectly natural to me and only enriched my life experiences, never causing any confusion or overload which some parents are concerned about. Parents who are anxious that their kids aren’t learning enough English if they attend immersion programs are, in my opinion, misinformed about how language skills develop.
Anyway, check out Speaking In Tongues if you’re interested. The film is more exploratory than didactic — e.g. it doesn’t explicitly name the white racism underlying “English only” politics, though it doesn’t really need to — but it’s a nice look at multilingualism and immersion as they play out in the lives of four kids and their families.
(via thisisnotindia)
NOBODY CARES FOR A GARMENTS GIRL (1986): This 17 minute documentary was created by women television producers enrolled in a 5 week training institute (Television Programs for Women’s Development) sponsored by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development. For their final project they chose to document the conditions in one garment factory in Dhaka. It was collectively produced by Sultana Siddiqui (Pakistan), Rezvan Dokht Zad (Iran), Laila Arzumnd (Bangladesh), Sri Sutini (Indonesia), Sandhya Jalal (India), Farida Rana (Pakistan), Badrunnessa Abdullah (Bangladesh), Deepa Gautam (Nepal), Anoma Perera (Sri Lanka). Course trainers: Jai Chandiram (India and AIBD course director), Sally Cloninger (USA), and Dinaz Kalwachwala (India).
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