Brian Hu

@Lasermanriki @criterionchannl And Saturday School is more on vacation than retired. We're always plotting something!

@husbrian @criterionchannl @husbrian i know saturdayschool is retired, but interested in your thoughts on a new asian american film archive that just popped up. includes a bunch of films i'd never heard of and a bunch that couldnt be streamed anywhere - asianamericanfilmindex.com

And then there’s Rea Tajiri’s masterful Wisdom Gone Wild, a geographic, historical, and spiritual journey. Music, play, photographs, and memories half-remembered connect Rea and her mother who has dementia, in a non-linear duet from LA to Philly to the incarceration camps.

@Lasermanriki @criterionchannl Oh interesting, I had not heard of it. As somebody who had been working on something similar, my first thought is copyright and how to make sure filmmakers are compensated. But certainly access to earlier work, and even just the acknowledgement of these titles, is so critical.

AAPI Heritage Month is coming to a close, but the films in First-Person Asian American will still be on the @criterionchannl. Hit the road with them!

Asian Americans built the railroads that spanned a continent. Through the eyes of generations that followed, we remap America. Stories that reanimate places and spaces. Characters that challenge manifest destiny and imperialist fantasies usually associated with cinematic travel.

There are returns home and visits with family. Kimi Takesue's heartfelt 95 and 6 to Go brings her to grandparents in Hawaii. Janice Tanaka finds her estranged father on LA’s Skid Row in Who’s Going to Pay for these Donuts Anyway?

Doan Hoang’s Oh, Saigon is the tragic version of that what-if tale. What if my parents didn’t flee Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon? For Doan, traveling to Vietnam is visiting a version of herself and family that, for political and perhaps personal reasons, was forbidden at home.

Or films like First Person Plural and Twinsters told by Korean adoptees returning to the country of their birth. I’ve always found adoptee reunions akin to speculative fiction. What if I had another family in another world? What if I had a long-lost twin??

Consider two very different cross-country travelogues. Renee Tajima-Peña's My America is a lively, eclectic portrait of Asian Americans on white roads and towns, in search of belonging. Miko Revereza's No Data Plan is a train ride through the eyes of an undocumented immigrant.

If you haven't had a chance to check out the "First Person Asian American" series on the Criterion Channel, I hope you will! The films are still streaming. I had the pleasure of curating the 11 features. criterionchannel.com/first-person-a…

The first-person documentary might seem like an insular genre, especially in an age of vlogs and TikTok, where the camera is a mirror and self-broadcasting device. But many Asian American documentaries, even those told in the first person, aim their cameras outward.

@swen_ryan Thanks Ryan!

Happy birthday @husbrian!!

@TonyzyYang @FilmQuarterly Looks like you are a student at UCL? I see that they have an online subscription to Film Quarterly, so you can access it from there!

@husbrian @FilmQuarterly Hi Brian, I am an undergraduate student who's unable to gain access to this article, but would really like to read it for an essay that I'm writing! Would it be possible for you to send it to me? My email is tonyzyyang@gmail.com, thank you so much!

Minari, Past Lives, The Farewell, Everything Everywhere all At Once. Is it a coincidence that this wave of award-winning Asian American cinema is all distributed by A24? That question led to other ones, culminating in this article, now in @FilmQuarterly online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-abs…

FIRST-PERSON ASIAN AMERICAN: 11 DOCUMENTARIES criterionchannel.com/first-person-a… As independent Asian American filmmakers took the matter of self-representation into their own hands, many turned inward: to their own families, personal histories, and private musings.

This series was a blast to research. So much tenderness, bitterness, humor, and horror, told through bold, personal visions of America.

Peppermint Candy is one of the films that made me fall in love with South Korean Cinema. Tonight you can see it at MOPA thx to @husbrian & @PacArtsMovement . It's brilliant and heartbreaking sdmart.org/event/on-film-…

@MatchCuts You should ask these folks! secretmovieclub.com/calendar/manil…

I need help Film Twitter. Does anyone know which distributor holds to rights to CYCLO (1995)? IMDBpro is not helpful and says that the older iteration of Lionsgate was the rights holder (they aren't).

An unexpected number 1! Happy to see attention going its way and grateful to have been able to contribute to the Blu-ray edition.

Trial of Uyghur film-maker to begin in China this week theguardian.com/global-develop…