Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

I Am a Ghost
Dir. H.P. Mendoza

A torrid journey through memory and history, I Am a Ghost follows Emily (Anne Ishida), a spirit with an unknown past, and Sylvia the clairvoyant sent to exorcise her. This is a ghost story in its truest form where the supernatural and the real fold in on themselves. Time and space collapse in body-tensing moments as Emily’s past slowly unravels through the suffocating banality of everyday routine.  H.P. Mendoza’s first psychological thriller shows horror in a new form.



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I Am a Ghost screens on March 9, 2012 at 9:10 pm at SF Film Society Cinema/New People, on March 10, 2012 at 6:10 pm at Pacific Film Archive Theater, and March 13, 2012 4:30 pm at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

Touch
Dir. Minh Duc Nguyen

It’s easy to take human contact for granted in a digital age where the devices that virtually connect us also push us physically further apart. In Touch, Minh Duc Nguyen weaves a mesmerizing narrative around the impact that human touch, or lack thereof, plays in the relationships in our lives.

Touch centers around the unexpected relationship that develops between Tam (Porter Lynn), a Vietnamese manicurist, and Brendan (John Ruby), a mechanic in a failing marriage to a wife who rejects him physically because of his dirty hands. In an attempt to save his relationship, Brendan begins coming to Tam to clean his nails. Tam and Brendan’s daily physical contact leads to a complicated emotional journey fueled by the complex loneliness they both feel in their respective lives: Brendan is alone in a marriage where his wife recoils at his touch and Tam struggles with her disabled and emotionally distraught father who physically and emotionally rejects her care.

Touch is set mostly in the space of a nail salon where Vietnamese workers groom American customers where they are physically connected but remain very culturally separate. In the salon, touch is both a bridge between and a lens to view cultural and economic difference. Nguyen quietly exposes how loudly physical contact can speak and connect us in the very intricate acts of love, loss, and human emotion.



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Touch screens on March 11, 2012 at 6:40 pm at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and March 17, 2012 at 6:30 pm at Camera 3 Cinemas.