VIEW ONE OF THESE TWO FILMS, TAKE NOTES (for yourself, you do not need to turn them in), AND ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS RELATED TO THE FILM YOU HAVE CHOSEN.
Choice A)
THE STORY OF VINH (56 minutes)
https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/51286/The-Story-of-Vinh
What is the story? Did you pick up on the dualism what are the two competing stories?
How is Vinh Dinhs being a failed model minority compare to Don Bonus? (On the filmic as well as on the individual level) Can you give specific scenes as an example?
Why do the two stories (AKA Don Bonus and The Story of Vinh) come across so differently? even if both are made by Asian American filmmakers? What are the structural and directorial differences? How many storytellers are there in The Story of Vinh?
Choice B)
SA I GU (42 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_UyYj-pR8U
How is perspective communicated/executed in this film? What feelings and emotions are communicated in and through this film project (about Korean immigrant women, directed and produced by Korean American women)?
Name 3 new pieces of information that you learned/heard?
What are some of the narratives that you hear? What word or phrase do you observe is repeated throughout the film? How is this film counter-hegemonic?
Before you start the self-scheduled screening, two items:
First, study the time-line of events leading up to the L.A. Uprising LA Uprising Timeline.pdfPreview the document
Second, gain some insight into the so-called, Black-Korean Conflict via a description of Michael Chos film, ANOTHER AMERICA
How did the idea for Another America begin?
The genesis of the project started in early 1992, before the riots. Around that time a few events took place which brought Black-Korean relations to the forefront. In Los Angeles, a Korean merchant shot and killed an African American teenager whom she accused of shoplifting. There was a fight that broke out between the two, and the Korean merchant killed this girl. The woman was convicted of murder, but sentenced only to parole. So that created a lot of outrage in the African American community. There was a lot being said about Black-Korean tensions. But I didn’t understand what that meant. When I was growing up, my father had a business and still has a business in the African American community in Detroit. He has been in the African American community for over thirty years.
So as I was growing up, I never saw anything of what the media called a “Black-Korean conflict.” My parents got along fine with their customers, especially my mother who was extremely friendly. I felt that the media didn’t know these communities and that they were in some ways creating a problem.
In January of 1992, I had an uncle who was murdered during a robbery at his store. His business was located in downtown Detroit, across from my father’s store. I felt that his death pointed to the deterioration and abandonment of the inner city, more so than to any inter-ethnic tension. The boy that killed him is African American, but no one in the family thinks of my uncle’s death as a racial issue since everyone that they come in contact with in their stores is African American.
The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival Underground Railroad Film Series presents ANOTHER AMERICA by Michael Cho
Filmmaker Michael Cho investigates his own family history and tragedy as he explores the Black/Korean conflict in the inner city as illuminated by the Los Angeles uprisings of 1992.
“In Another America, a documentary that I produced about the relationship between Korean American merchants and African Americans in the inner city, I looked at the murder of one of my uncles, an immigrant from Korea, during a robbery at his store in downtown Detroit. When he was murdered, my father, also a downtown merchant, called the local television news stations to have them cover my uncle’s death. He wanted to tell them a larger story about how the city had fallen apart under the weight of its abandonment and how this was connected to my uncle’s murder. Instead, the TV news programs told a tragic story of a family victimized by a random crime. The emotions were there in their report, but little context. Their coverage undoubtedly moved many who watched the news that night. But did it inform them?
