The Asian Film Festival continues throughout the week, and there’s even more gay content now that I’ve had a chance to review more of the films.
Each of the shorts blocks — 1, which plays Monday at 4:05 p.m.; 2, which plays Tuesday at 6:10 p.m.; and 3, which runs Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. — have films with gay storylines. In 1, it’s between one of the couples in the short Tu & Eu, about how couples relate to one another. In 2, a young woman flirts with a female yoga instructor in Savasana, though not all is what it seems. But the big gay short is A Woman Called Canyon Sam, a documentary about one of the first lesbian Asian activists in America. (I’m glad about the last one, because the director, Quentin Lee, was still looking for funding a few months ago, which we wrote about.)
The centerpiece of the gay content — aside from the experiemental film The Image Threads, which I wrote about last week — is I Am, a documentary about being gay in Indian culture. “Gay marriages are completely legal in India,” remarks the narrator, who interviews several families and how they deal with having gay and lesbian sons and daughters. It’s an unusual insight into how different cultures deal with issues of homosexuality.
I Am plays tonight at 7:30 at the Magnolia Theatre, where all films in fest screen.
