Independents Night: "Mai's America"

Written and Directed by: Marlo Poras
Documentary/ 2001
About the Film
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the IFP are pleased to present the first Independents Night screening of 2002: Marlo Poras’ Mai’s America (an IFP Market 2001 film), the intimate portrait of a spunky, mini-skirted daughter of Ho Chi Minh’s revolution. We meet Mai and her cosmopolitan family in communist Hanoi. She is proud that her father fought in the American war; more than anything, she wants to make her family proud of her. So, fueled by the opportunity for a better education and enticed by an MTV-inspired vision of America, she travels to the States for her senior year of high school. Nothing in Mai’s wildest imagination prepares her for her crash landing in rural Mississippi... where her relationships with white Pentecostal and black Baptist host-families, self-proclaimed rednecks, transvestites, and South Vietnamese immigrants challenge her long-held ideas about America, about herself, about freedom, and even about Vietnam.
About the Filmmaker
First-time filmmaker Marlo Poras, herself a former exchange student, had been living in Hanoi producing AIDS education video for Vietnamese teens when she was inspired to make “Mai’s America.”
How to Attend
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center of Performing Arts, 165 West 65th Street, (Broadway/Amsterdam)