Tomio Geron
Still Breaking Through
New films by Justin Lin and Michael Kang break new ground, but will Hollywood give them a shot?
FIVE YEARS AGO, Justin Lin was just another up-and-coming director at the Sundance Film Festival hoping to catch a big break.
With an unknown indie coming-of-age flick called Better Luck Tomorrow and only 10 maxed-out credit cards to show for it, he didn't know how to respond when people asked, "What do you do?" He clearly wasn't making a living as a filmmaker.
This year, back in the snow-blown Park City, UT, streets for Sundance, he had a little more ease in his step.
Raising Marginalized Voices
From street corners to hidden histories, Steven Okazaki's documentaries tell untold stories.
STEVEN OKAZAKI quietly but intensely tells the story of Sakue Shimohira, a victim he interviewed for his new film, White Light/Black Rain.
Shimohira was 10 years old and living in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb fell. "There's a remarkable moment when she describes looking for her mother [right after the bombings] and finds a completely blackened body. The body is unidentifiable except for a gold tooth. She reaches out and touches her mother, and [the body] disintegrates into ashes."