Ryan ChartrandThe Cal Poly chapter of the Chinese Student Association is showing a series of films in conjunction with the Asian CineVision National Tour this weekend, starting tonight and running each night at 7:30 p.m. in the Business Silo (Business building in room 213).
?The Asian CineVision Tour is providing a couple of short films every night this weekend, to be shown along with the feature film for that night.
The series of films will include a feature-length film to be shown tonight entitled “A Moment With You,” a film that was produced by recent UC Santa Barbara graduates.
Showing tomorrow night is “Saving Face.” This film was directed by Alice Wu, and focuses on a young girl named Wilhelmina (“Wil”), played by Michelle Krusiee, who balances her promising career as a surgeon and her responsibilities as an obedient daughter. A romantic comedy, the film’s funny moments come when she pretends to be a good daughter and puts up with her mother’s arranged matches for her with available bachelors, while she is involved in a lesbian relationship with a beautiful dancer.
When her mother unexpectedly shows up pregnant at her door, shamed by the Chinese community and desperate, this secret relationship suddenly becomes more difficult to hide.
She is forced to try to understand her mother’s “old world” way of life and her intentions, and discovers her own heart in the process.
“The Motel” will be playing on Sunday night, a film written and directed by Michael Kang. According to imdb.com, this film is about a thirteen-year-old boy, Ernest Chin (played by Jeffrey Chyau), who “lives and works at a sleazy hourly-rate motel on a strip of desolate suburban bi-way. Misunderstood by his family and blindly careening into puberty, Ernest befriends Sam Kim, a self-destructive yet charismatic Korean man who has checked in. Sam teaches the fatherless boy all the rites of manhood.” The boy has had to assume the tasks of the man of the house, ever since his father has left the family. His mother is very hard-nosed, but down, she is afraid her little boy is now growing into a man.
Chin develops a strong crush on a young girl named Christine whose family owns a restaurant down the street from the motel. Unfortunately, she does not return the sentiment.
Kim’s goal when arriving at the motel is to forget about the life he left back home, and he plans to do that by sleeping with as many hookers as possible. But when he meets Chin, he sees something in him that drives him to take him under his supervision, and guide him through growing up. The two bond, and become friends in the process.
The Chinese Student Association decided to bring the CineVision Tour to Cal Poly after “one of (the club’s) co-directors went to a Davis film festival and decided to do something like it at Cal Poly,” said Melissa Wan, a biochemistry senior and the president of the Chinese Student Association at Cal Poly.