VC Connect #2: American Me

Welcome to VC CONNECT, an online destination through which just some of the hundreds of films and media productions created by Visual Communications can be found for your enjoyment. Featured films include some of our VC Classics, as well as films made in the Digital Histories production program for older adults and the Armed With a Camera Fellowship for Emerging Artists. Each week, we’ll roll out a new batch, specially themed for our audience’s diverse cinematic palate. Our focus this week is what it means to be American. Click here to watch the complete showcase.

American Me

The full range of “Americanness” is emphatically expressed through this selection of works from Visual Communications’ vanguard Armed With a Camera (AWC) Fellowship for Emerging Media Artists, a program which develops the next generation of Asian American and Pacific Islander artists to capture their world and stories. No proof of citizenship needed here, and none asked.

Thank you to the following sponsors for their ongoing support of the Armed With a Camera Fellowship: Sony Pictures Entertainment, SAGindie, West One Music Group, Final Draft, Los Angeles County Arts & Culture, Flash Cuts, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Writers Guild of America West.

ALL THE WAY (2015) by Allison Nakamura
It's a Wednesday morning in Salt Lake City and the "Nisei Senior Mixed" Bowling League is cooking up competition on the lanes.

AMONG B-BOYS (2004) by Christopher C. Woon
In this intimate documentary profile, the filmmaker sharply observes the burgeoning Hmong hip-hop youth culture of Atwater, California (a suburb north of Fresno).

BASKETBALL, MERI JAAN (2012) by Veena Hampapur
Yeshodhara, a vibrant woman who immigrated to the United States from India thirty years ago, has a lifelong love of professional sports that has served as a vehicle to create her own community and sense of belonging.

DIM SUM AND THE RACETRACK (2008) by Suilma Rodriguez
In an attempt to understand and remember her late father, the filmmaker revisits his old bedroom to sort out the sweet memories of dim sum on Sundays, and the days with dad at the racetrack.

IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME ALREADY (2014) by Soo Hyun Chung
A married couple is stuck in a rut of chicken dinners and TV watching. But when the wife impulsively attends an open house, the fantasy of a blank slate unearths long buried feelings that force her to question if her own house — and her marriage — is really her home.

LEGEND (2008) by Mark Villegas
From his beginnings as a member of the legendary DJ crew The World Famous Beat Junkies to becoming proprietor of the business Stacks Records, Isaiah Dacio (aka DJ Icy Ice) navigates through the cultural history of Filipino youth in Los Angeles during the 1980s and ’90s.

LIQUOR STORE BABIES (2018) by So Yun Um
The lives of two friends and their liquor store owning fathers intersect, as they take a candid look at how their lives and dreams are connected.

LOST & FOUND (2007) by Tam Tran
Stephanie, an undocumented student at UCLA, attempts to regain what she's lost.

MY FAMILY’S LULLABY (2004) by Mia Villanueva
The filmmaker offers an essay of her grandfather, a classical and jazz pianist who has played alongside the greats of 20th century music.

MY NAME IS ASIROH (2013) by Asiroh Cham
When a young girl is bullied in school about her unusual name and wants to change it, her father tells her about their indigenous roots as descendants of the Champa Kingdom and his harrowing escape from the Khmer Rouge.

THAT PARTICULAR TIME (2012) by Jeff Man
Following his sudden death in 2005, Eddie Oshiro’s legacy is discovered inside his tiny studio apartment — a collection of decades' worth of photographs taken by Oshiro himself as he documented his Little Tokyo community in Los Angeles.

TRAILS (2019) by Chris Nguyen
A personal and experimental portrait of Orange County’s Little Saigon that expresses how memory is embodied in regards to a history of displacement, exploring what it means to belong to a place and what would lays ahead.