ethnocine films
Nobel Nok Dah
offers an intimate view into the lives of three refugee women from Burma whose migratory paths cross in Thailand and eventually meet when they resettle to central New York. Drawing upon methods of feminist oral history and ethno-fiction, the film traces glimmers of subjectivity that complicate any singular narrative of the refugee experience. As camera movements follow the textures of everyday life and work, a weave of sensorial fragments immerses audiences in women's narratives of self, place, and belonging.
Directors: Emily Hong, Mariangela Mihai & Miasarah Lai Featured & in collaboration with Nok Paw Bleh, Nobel Htoo & Dah Bu Poe
Wushu warriors
On a hilltop overlooking Kabul, Sima trains Hazara women in Kung Fu to fight sexism & violence as the US-led war in Afghanistan persists. WUSHU WARRIORS is a documentary action film that mediates on globalization, the legacy of how martial arts, and the forgotten 17 year long war as Sima combats restrictive ideology and harassment to and bring honor to war torn Afghanistan.
Director Miasarah Lai
Smile4kime
tells the story of Kim, an African-American woman who lived with depression and trauma, and Elena, a Puerto Rican woman dealing with depression and grief after the death of her friend Kim. Weaving in and out of time and space, the film incorporates interviews, experimental/performance footage, and animation to explore their connection both past and present
Directed by Elena Guzman
For my art
is a two channel installation that follows 5 women performance artists as they venture into the streets, markets, and mega-malls of Yangon, Burma/Myanmar, transforming the quotidian into unexpected performance spaces. As ordinary people and objects are swept into their art, the boundaries between performance and everyday life begin to disappear.
Directed by Emily Hong, Miasarah Lai & Mariangela Mihai
Above and below the ground
tells the story of indigenous punk rock pastors who team up with women activists to protect a sacred river from a Chinese-built mega dam. When Aung San Suu Kyi breaks an election promise to cancel the dam, activists and musicians fight back the best way they know how--through protest, prayer, and Karaoke music videos.
Director & DP: Emily Hong
Get By: the fight for a living wage
follows two recycling workers, Stanley & Milton as they bring their struggle for a living wage to the legislature, media, and the streets of Ithaca, New York. An exploration of precarity, worker-community solidarity and urban democracy, the film raises key questions about the public value of increasingly privatized work, and the challenges of organizing across divides of race and class.
Directed by Emily Hong
