The Pain of Thirsty

The Pain of Being Thirsty is just that - a bit of pain mixed in with a bit of thirst to make a point. Using a frustrating art house cinematic style, the documentary blends Internment camps in Arizona with a found letter written by a Muslim prisoner awaiting extradition to Guantanamo Bay.  In connecting the two events, the film weaves a connection between the way Japanese-Americans were and Arab-Americans are perceived in times of disintegration.

Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People

Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People is an superb historical documentary that follows an ethnic enclave of Koreans in Kazakhstan. Josef Stalin's 1937 ethnic cleansing campaign deported everyone of Korean origin living in the coastal provinces of the Far East Russia near the border of North Korea to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia 3,700 miles away. Designated as 'Koryo Saram' ("unreliable people" in Russian), many Koreans who had served loyally for the Russians were denounced as enemies of the State and were purged politically and culturally. As Kazakhstan became a concentration camp of exiled people from throughout the Soviet Union, the documentary reveals how a 'dumping ground' of ethnicities actually became a melting pot for a new Kazakh culture. Although very slow at times, and bogged down by historical extrapolations, the documentary is altogether engaging and memorable.

Vincent Who? 

In what is now considered the turning point of Asian American history, the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin by two white autoworkers at the height of anti-Japanese industry sentiment in America is intelligently investigated in Vincent Who?   The slap-on-the-wrist sentence that the judge in the case gave the killers - a mere $3,000 fine and three years probation - rallied Asian-Americans around the country to unite for the first time across ethnic and socio-economic lines to form a real pan-Asian community movement.  Footage of the cries of Chin's mother, Lilly, is haunting and moving, while the memories of participants in the Asian Am movement were inspiring and memorable.