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Asian Film Database

Faceless (1998)
5min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Hsiao Shou-wen (Taiwan)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary:  
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Faces (چهره ها (2007
100min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): Persian
Director/Filmmaker: Shanin Parhami (Iran)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards: Best Feature Film, Experimental Film Festival, Sydney, Australia, 2007
Setting: Canada
Summary: A multi-layered, experimental documentary
reflecting on Iranian art, culture, politics of representation, history and the power
of popular media as it exploring the life
and work of 10 Iranian-Canadian artists in diaspora.
(shahinparhami.info)
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Faded Rainbow (2000)
24min. Drama
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Gilbert Kwong (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Hong Kong
Summary: Set in Hong Kong, Faded Rainbow takes a small incident out of a young woman's life and crafts it into a stylish and touching film. While riding on a bus, a young woman, Mand, remembers an incident that happened with her best friend in highschool, Fay. Without falling into the trp of being trite or cute writer/director Gilbert Kwong skillfully observes the exact moment when the two girls' frienship faces changes wrought by the approaching forces of adulthood. (Reel Asian)
Source: Reel Asian

 

Fair Trade (2009)
5min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Leslie Supnet (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
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Summary:

A psychedelic animation about a young girl who purges herself from the hypnotic demons of her past.
Source: Reel Asian

 

The Fallen (2010)
5min. Video Art, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Paul Wong (Canada)
Production Company: Paul Wong Projects
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Dedicated to all who have risked climbing, and to those who have fallen by choice, circumstance or by accident. The video is a mix of original, found and appropriated footage with music courtesy of Tom Waits. The Fallen was created for 'LED Down The Garden Path' at the Bloedel Conservatory as part of Paul Wong's '5', a series of site-specific installations and events commissioned by the City of Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program. (paulwongprojects.com)
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Falling for Caroline (2009)
20min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Christine Chew(Canada)
Production Company: Out There Productions
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards: Audience Award, Best Short, ImageOut, Rochester, New York, 2009; Audience Choice Award for Short Film, image + nation, Montreal, 2009; Best Short Film, Queersicht Festival, Bern, Switzerland, 2009; Rosa Brille Prize, Queersicht Festival Bern, Switzerland, 2009
Setting: Canada
Summary: Movie buff and hopeless romantic Darcy meets and falls in love with Caroline while fighting over a Sarah Waters DVD at a video rental store. With the help of her best friend Tia, Darcy sets out on a quest to woo and win the girl of her dreams. However, she must first overcome a wardrobe malfunction, her own extreme klutziness whenever she's around Caroline and, most challenging of all, the very bad lesbian habit of over-processing a good thing. (Christine Chew)
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Family (2001)
4min. Video Art, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Heather Keung
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Family is a short video about a car ride home with the artist's mother and father. As we watch the mother go through a difficult physical and emotional experience, the father is absent from the image. He discusses his thoughts on the body, mind and suffering. He compares emotional suffering to physical pain, as he tries to reason out intelligence over physicality. (Vtape)
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Faraway (2011)
15min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Janice Lee (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: French fries are a special food for Rachel and her grandmother. As they prepare New Year's Eve dinner, they learn to look beyond language and connect through the memories they share.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Farewell (2003)
9min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Cane Chow (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Ladies and gentlement of the class of '97 wear sunscreen! So begins the commencement speech that Kurt Vonnegut never delivered though the words resonated and made the rounds on the internet for months before the real author was revealed. In 1999 director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) set the prose to music and the single became a hit, which Caine Chow has used as the basis for this fond farewell to the class of '03 at Toronto's Riverdale Collegiate.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Father and Son (2005)
5min. Animation, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Joe Chang (China)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: This animated short film draws inspiration from Chang's six-year-old son and his perceptions of the process of bonding between a parent and a child. With humour and sentiment, it hopes to draw people's attention to the extraordinary moments in our otherwise ordinary lives. (YouTube)
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Field Guide to Western Wildflowers (2000)
5min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Wayne Yung (Canada) 
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The first Asian kiss: fantasizing about it, talking about it, doing it. A lush, multilayered video featuring 63 men in one long kiss. (wayneyung.com)
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Fighting Grandpa (1998)
21min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Greg Pak (USA)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: By delving into the suppressed conflicts and contradictions at the heart of many immigrant family histories, "Fighting Grandpa" allows a glimpse of how a previous generation, bound by tradition and culture, built a complex, ambiguous love that their grandchildren can only barely comprehend. (Greg Pak)
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Film Club (2001)
45min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Cyrus Sundar Singh (India)
Production Company: Salaam Shalom Productions Inc.
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards: Reel Diversity Ontario Competition winner, National Film Board (2000); Canada Award, Gemini Awards (2002)
Setting: Canada
Summary: This film takes us back to the 1970s and Pierre Trudeau's new policy of multiculturalism. When a Grade 8 teacher, eager to pass along his love of cinema, formed an after-school film club, it attracted a klatch of immigrant kids eager to embrace their new country. Stimulating and creative, the club was a complete departure from anything they had known and provided a safe haven from the harsh world around them. Together, they made a tiny 8mm award winner called Ohh Canada. It captured the spirit of a fresh start: everything was new and anything was possible. Now, as adults, our group looks back to marvel at their childhood dreams and the bond they share with the teacher who brought them together. Their stories, both touching and personal, reveal the surprising drama contained within apparently ordinary lives. (University of Toronto Libraries)
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Filter Queen (1980)
Short
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Midi Onodera (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Named after my mother's beloved vacuum cleaner, this short film explores various ordinary household chores as seen through the eyes of a bored teenager. (midionodera.com)
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Fire (1996)
108min. Fiction, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Deepa Mehta (India)
Production Company: Trial by Fire Films, Inc., Kaleidoscope India (Pvt.) Ltd.
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Fire is a delicate, tender story about two women finding love while caught in the bounds of tradition, a joint family, a somewhat tyrannical mother-in-law with a bell and a bed in the central location of the house, and self-consumed husbands. Sita (Nandita Das) comes into the household as the younger daughter-in-law, married to a man (Jaaved Jaaferi) in love with another woman and with no tenderness or kindness for Sita. (SAWNET)
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First Love & Other Pains (1999)
50min. Short, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Simon Chung (Canada/China)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: A post colonial love story between a professor who feels trapped in a cultural backwater and the much younger Mark, an adoring student who pursies him with single minded determination. (Reel Asian)
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First Person Plural (2000)
60min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Borshay Deann Liem (USA)
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Summary: In 1966, Deann Borshay Liem was adopted by an American family and was sent from Korea to her new home. Growing up in California, the memory of her birth family was nearly obliterated until recurring dreams lead Deann to discover the truth: her Korean mother was very much alive. Bravely uniting her biological and adoptive families, Deann's heartfelt journey makes First Person Plural a poignant essay on family, loss, and the reconciling of two identities. (MU FIlms)
Source: Reel Asian

 

Fish and Chips (1996)
11min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Justin Lin (USA)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: mini drama unfold on both sides of the counter of a family run mom and pop restaurant. (Reel Asian)
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Fish in a Barrel (2009)
8min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Randall Lloyd Okita (Canada)
Production Company: Absitomen Media
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Film
Awards: Winner, Most Innovative Film, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, 2009
Setting: Canada
Summary: A young man faces his demons as his struggle erupts into visions that question what lies below the surface. (www.winnipegfilmgroup.com)
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Five Aunties (2001)
35min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Brenda Joy Lem (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: The filmmaker talks to five Asian women artist/activists from Toronto of her generation: min Sook Lee, Laura Coramai, Susanda Yee, Melanya Aguilar and Kyo MacLear have been peers and role models to her. Through their stories we get a sense of their subjective understandings of their life histories. Through their personal and political trajectories we begin to see the driving principles that underlie their work and life views. (Vtape)
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Five Section Aesthetic on Persuasion (2000)
6min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Patrick Wong (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Five Section Aesthetic is an exploration into a visual rendering of the major facets of rhetoric, or of the art of persuasion. Essentially, this work is a personal visual document that outlines the main elements and methodologies found in the attempt to teach, or otherwise instill ideology (Vtape)
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Flash (2005)
3min. Short, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Khanhthuan Tran (Vietnam)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: She finds someone with a bullet hole in their head. She was comfortable with her journal until the air got thick. She reaches to help as his eyes look back at her (Vtape)
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Flipping (2009)
25min. Dramedy, Colour
Language(s): English, Korean
Director/Filmmaker: Samuel Kiehon Lee (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Film
Awards:  
Setting: Korean
Summary: A stylish fast-paced romantic dramedy set in Korea about four people who keep sleeping with their respective ex-partners. (Samuel Kiehon Lee)
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Floored by Love (2005)
83min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Desiree Lim (Malaysia)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards: One of the Top 10 LGBT DVDs for 2005, The Advocate, one of the America's largest LGBT magazines
Setting: Canada
Summary: Floored By Love is a heart-warming family comedy about finding the courage to be who you really are in two different households - a Chinese-Japanese lesbian couple and an African American/Jewish blended family in Vancouver. (Desiree Lim)
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Floor Kids (2007)
4min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Jonathon Ng (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Playing with bboying and turntables, Kid Koala and Jonathan Ng team up to draw attention to Montreal's underground music scene. When the director was forced to quit bboying due to a skin related illness, he turned to animation, which allowed his love for the urban dance to find an alternative outlet.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Flowers in the Attic (2014)
86min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Deborah Chow (Canada)
Production Company: Cue the Dog Productions;
Front Street Pictures
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: United States
Summary: After the sudden death of their father, four children face cruel treatment from their ruthless grandmother. (IMDb)
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Flutter (2006)
6min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Howie Shia (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Running away with ambition and love, two best friends explore the surrounding city and discover an infinite maze and endless canvas. Through traditional and digital animation, with a mashup score of jazz, electronics, and sampling, Shia looks to reclaim the urban landscape as a fertile ground for epic adventure and romantic fairy tales.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Fly (2004)
6min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s): Sound
Director/Filmmaker: Luo Li
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards: York University Award for Best Student Film, Images Festival, Toronto, 2005
Setting: Canada
Summary: Traces of birds become calligraphy. Handmade filmmaking creates impressions of flying. (Images Festival)Food Trilogy
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The Food Trilogy (1981)
min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Midi Onodera (Canada)
Production Company:  
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Inspired by a life long obsession with food, The Food Trilogy takes a playful look at different aspects of consumption – from an overwhelming trip to the supermarket, to making out with a hamburger, to excessive overindulging. (midionodera.com)
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Footsteps into Gangland (2011)
93min. Documentary, Colour, Black and White
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Mani Amar (Canada)
Production Company: Films of Fire Productions
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: This film is Director Mani Amar's film adaptation of true events that shattered the South Asian community of Vancouver. Footsteps Into Gangland gives the audience and especially parents a true and unbiased look into a single day of the lives of these characters. (http://maniamar.com)
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Found (2009)
6min. Uncategorized
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Paramita Nath (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: Found is about Toronto poet Souvankham Thammavongsa, who was born in a Lao refugee camp in Thailand. Nath beautifully brings together Thammavongsa's words and her father's abandoned scrapbook into a moving visual poem.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Fragments du Neant (2006)
9min. Short, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Arif Noorani
Production Company:  
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Summary: Nothing is still, all what surrounds us seems ephemeral, passing and evanescent even ourselves. Apparition and extinction define the formula of our existence: passing from illusion to aught we stray in unknown roads, we advance to obscure goals. Shall we believe the reflected image of life on the surface of rivers? (http://www.zhibit.org/nahedmansour)
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Fred's Burqa (2005)
Comedy
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Zarqa Nawaz (England)
Production Company:  
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Setting:  
Summary: A stolen burqa leads to mistaken identity, a career change and true love. (www.zarqanawaz.com)
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Free Line (2003)
4min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Keum-Taek Jung (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Summary: A Brakhagian exploration of the intricate interaction between superimposed geometric figures and computer-generated sound.
Source: Reel Asian

 

Freight Train Land (2000)
10min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Kagen Goh (Singapore)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting:  
Summary: A hip hop opera written and directed by C.R. Avery addressing issues of the Downtown Eastside such as poverty, drug addiction and prostitution. (Kagen Goh)
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The French Guy (2005)
83min. Fiction, Colour
Language(s): English, German
Director/Filmmaker: Ann Marie Fleming (Japan)
Production Company: Sleepy Dog Films
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Excerpt
Awards: Best of Fest Feature Film, Boston Underground Film Festival; Gold Medal for Excellence and Jury Choice for Best Impact of Music in a Feature Firlm, Park City Film and Music Festival.
Setting:  
Summary: Elizabeth Murray just wants to help! Feeling lucky to be alive after surviving brain surgery, she brings home a stray young man to nurse him back to health. (Sleepy Dog Films)
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Freshmen (1998)
130min. Drama, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Tom Huang (USA)
Production Company:  
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Summary: The award-winning Freshmen follows the lives of four incoming freshmen from different backgrounds and different journeys: San Ling, a Chinese-American who is obsessed with pop-icon Billy Joel and loathes his Chinese side; Tonisha Watkins, an inner-city prodigy who struggles between being a pre-med student and paying the family bills; Rick Kennedy, a conservative East Coast transplant who wrestles with multi-cultural university life and dealing with a career choice he doesn't want anymore; and Judy Oz, a free-spirited party girl who takes on the college social scene until it spirals out of her control. We follow the four as they meet and interact in a history discussion class, as well as watching their stories as they continue, with and without each other, outside the classroom. T. (Tom Huang)
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The Frog Princes (2010)
67min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Omar Majeed with Ryan Mullins (Pakistan)
Production Company: Eye Steel Film
Trailer/Excerpt/Film: Trailer
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: This film follows the story of a Montreal-based theatre troupe training for a play adaptation of the fairytale The Princess and the Frog. All twenty actors in the troupe have intellectual and developmental disabilities. The film is shot as a play within a play. (EyeSteelFilm)
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Frogs in Love: The Making of Frauds in Love (2006)
52min. Documentary, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Bashar Shbib (Syria) 
Production Company: Oneira Pictures International
Trailer/Excerpt/Film:  
Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: Frogs In Love depicts the exciting and sometimes tumultuous circumstances that surround shooting Adam Coleman Howard's latest film, Frauds in Love, starring himself and Alexa Woodward. For Oneira's 25th anniversary, the veteran filmmaker, Bashar Shbib was convinced to give someone else the opportunity to take the reigns and lead one of his films. With a new approach comes a new group dynamic, making for a very special twist that may not be for the worse. (www.sunsetpictures.ca)
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From Alex To Alex (2006)
6min. Experimental, Colour
Language(s): English
Director/Filmmaker: Alison S.M Kobayashi (Canada)
Production Company:  
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Awards:  
Setting: Canada
Summary: In the fall of 2003, the filmmaker found a letter on the Winston Churchill Boulevard/Queen Elizabeth Way overpass. It was labelled From: Alex To: Alex. This is a film based on the contents of that letter. (Alison S.M. Kobayashi)
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Fufu The Worldweary (1998)
153min. Uncategorized, Colour
Language(s):  
Director/Filmmaker: Obitani Yuuri (Japan)
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Summary: FuFu the worldweary is an epic length videotape inspired by the directors Dream Book, where Obtani Yuuri recorded fantastic dreams every dya in the intense heat of that abnormally hot summer of 1995. (Reel Asian)
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