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Vietnam. Rednecks. Transvestites.
Pentecostals. Baptists. All packed into
one poignant film about what America
looks like to a young outsider. A spunky
mini-skirted Vietnamese teenager decides
to spend a year in the United States as
an exchange student. Where do they send
her? To New York or Los Angeles? Nope.
To rural Mississippi. Marlo Poras’
first feature film took the director on
a two-and-a-half year odyssey
(single-handedly running the production,
direction, writing, camera and sound)
from Hanoi to rural Mississippi to New
Orleans and finally, to Detroit. Mai is
sent first to a dysfunctional rural
white Pentecostal family with a sullen
daughter her own age; hardly the stuff
of the Tinseltown movies Mai has grown
up with. Her only escapes from her host
family and the town rednecks are school,
where she cheerfully educates her
clueless classmates about the Vietnam
War from the North Vietnamese point of
view, and her friendship with Chris, a
gospel-singing transvestite. Chris is
her soulmate. They put on makeup
together. Mai invites him to her prom.
Mai’s next placement is with an
African-American Baptist couple who are
warm and wonderful to Mai but whose
marriage is strained. Still not the
Brady Bunch. Mai tries her hand at
college in New Orleans and as a
pedicurist in Detroit. She meets
Americans of every stripe. She strikes
up friendships with many South
Vietnamese immigrants, learns about how
they are adjusting to the United States
and commiserates with the children of
her parents’ former enemies. Mai’s
America is one much more complex than
Hollywood’s, a diverse country at once
packed with hatred and full of
tolerance. Through Mai’s eyes, we can
see our America more clearly. --Joan
Saltzman, John Stuart Katz
This Shorts Program Features:
Bean Cake ( US, 2001,
12 min , David Greenspan )
The winner of the short film Palme
d’Or in Cannes 2001, this is a
well-acted and directed Japanese
language film from USC about a young boy
in ‘30s Japan who incurs the wrath of
his new school teacher when he professes
a preference for bean cakes over the
Emperor. All humorously told in the
style of early post-war Japanese
filmmaking.
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