Frameline32 | SF GLBT Film Festival: Gay Asian Short Films

From Singapore to Seoul and L.A.: Gay Asian Shorts is a collective of five short pieces. When I saw the title and the the picture with a pout-lipped Asian man posing in front of the dryers in a laundromat, I thought it’s some off-the-beaten-path documentary about gay Asian men and their shorts fetish! Well, that’s a bit of wishful thinking on my part. It’s a collection of narrative, documentary and experimental shorts that provide a variety of perspectives on the gay Asian experience at home and abroad.

Four Dishes is the shortest of the five, only 8-minute long. One Singaporean family is having a dinner conversation about their upcoming vacation plan. Unfortunately, the audio of this is poor that I missed out the happening. What happens to the mother and the younger son? During their laundry, a young couple (who just moved in together) in Los Angeles learns that the little things (resolving the difference in two people, patience, respect) are what really count after meeting an older gentleman in Laundromat.

Audience might perceive the weight Seoul to Soul, which documents a young orphaned Asian man’s turbulent journey from a fostered Mormon upbringing in Utah through his adulthood in San Diego. Wade has come a long way to come to terms with his gay Asian identity, as he recalls a life fraught with pitfalls as he navigates a maze of addictions. What hits me the most is his feeling the difficulty to fit in as a gay Asian man among the majority of gay Caucasian men. On a lighter note, in Postcard, a Korean post office clerk, one Miss Park, mistakenly thinks that a customer is trying to get her attention by writing open love letters on the postcards he regularly sends out to himself.

Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head is the most shocking of all–in terms of explicitness. It’s a poetic homage to the great American poet and writer of Howl and a vehement political statement on the repressive censorship in Singapore. This segment cannot be screened in Singapore, which the narrator deemed so uniquely (making fun of the Board of Tourism slogan Uniquely Singapore) that the country cannot even appreciate the honesty and freedom of life by censuring pornography.

Four Dishes directed by Leon Cheo 2008 Singapore 8 min
Laundromat directed by Edward Gunawan 2007 USA 12 min
Seoul to Soul directed by Paul Detwiler and Michael Chen 2006 USA 18 min
The Postcard directed by Josh Kim USA 15 min in Korean with English sub-titles
Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head directed by X’Ho 2007 Singapore 15 min