Big Nights
Opening Night Film
Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 7:00 pm
The San Diego Natural History Museum
David Siev and his siblings grew up in Bad Axe, Michigan, home of two main stoplights, cornfields, and his family’s restaurant. When the pandemic hit, they all moved back home to help their parents navigate their COVID-era business. Forever a filmmaker, David keeps his camera on sisters looking out for family safety, a father reminded of the killing fields he escaped, and a conservative community with much to say about a Cambodian Mexican family speaking out during Black Lives Matter protests. As inspiring and emotional a portrait of 2020 as any, the award-winning BAD AXE is a tribute to immigrant families, their businesses, and the love that keeps them going.
Admission includes outdoor pre- and post-screening receptions.
Centerpiece Film
Sunday, November 6, 2022 at 5:30 pm
UltraStar Cinemas Mission Valley
In this masterwork of a career-long investigation into collective memory, Rea Tajiri Strawberry Fields partners with her mother, Rose Tajiri Noda, diagnosed with dementia at the age of 76. A duet of both care and creation, WISDOM GONE WILD chronicles Rose’s transformation of self while sprawling across time, as Rose’s memories emerge from everyday encounters, songs, and anxieties. A family history comes into focus: of Japanese farmers in the Salinas strawberry fields, of WWII concentration camp survivors and their children, of an archive co-created by a family of artists. Moving to the beat of Rose’s “heart radio,” WISDOM GONE WILD redefines memory as a time-traveling, interdimensional, intergenerational dialogue, as Rose holds space for her ancestors and children to speak.
Admission includes outdoor post-screening reception.
Closing Night Film
Friday, November 11, 2022 at 7:15 pm
The San Diego Natural History Museum
In Anthony Shim’s emotionally layered second feature, RICEBOY SLEEPS, So-young and her young son Dong-hyun leave behind family tragedy in South Korea for a new life—and new dreams—in Canada. Encountering the isolation and alienation of being outsiders in a strange country, a distance grows between them. “A man can only cry three times in his life,” So-young declares at one point, refusing to acquiesce to the “polite” racism they constantly encounter. “Once when he is born, once when his mom dies, and once when his father dies.” Richly detailed performances from Choi Seung-yoon and Ethan Hwang illuminate the tense and tender bond between mother and child.
Admission includes outdoor pre- and post-screening receptions.
Sneak Preview
Friday, November 4, 2022 at 7:20 pm
UltraStar Cinemas Mission Valley
Invisible yet ever-present, anonymous yet indispensable. For over six decades, Filipino nurses have been at the frontlines of the American medical establishment, but their stories remain in the background. Emmy-winning director Michele Josue fills in this critical history and questions the human costs of indifference. Tracing a story that begins with U.S. imperialism in the Philippines, and arriving at the COVID-19 pandemic, when Filipino American nurses disproportionately succumbed to the disease, NURSE UNSEEN centers nurses, Filipinos, and women in a powerful chronicle of sacrifice and healing.
