Arts Listings

Over the next few weeks, Pacific Film Archive is presenting two series dedicated to women. 

The 11th annual Women of Color Film Festival runs through Sunday and features a number of films, both long and short, by and about women. Several of the filmmakers will appear in person to discuss their work. 

One of the films showing is Christine Choy’s Academy Award-nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) The film examines an incident in 1982 Detroit in which Chinese-American Vincent Chin was mistaken for Japanese and beaten to death by white auto workers who had lost their jobs as demand for Japan’s more fuel-efficient cars caused mass layoffs in the American auto industry. The workers were given light sentences, sparking nationwide outrage among Asian Americans. Choy’s film documents the campaign by Vincent Chin’s mother to bring the murderers to justice. 

Christine Choy will discuss her career at 1 p.m. today (Friday); Who Killed Vincent Chin? plays at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.  

Vantage Points, a series of new documentaries by women starts at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday with a screening of Jennifer Montgomery’s Threads of Belonging (2003) and continues the following Tuesday with Lynne Sachs’ States of UnBelonging (2005). After a brief hiatus, the series continues April 4 with Adele Horne’s The Tailenders (2005) and runs through April 18, concluding with Jenni Olson’s The Joy of Life (2005).  

The Joy of Life depicts two forms of falling and their accompanying emotional states. The first is the feeling of falling in love, in which sensory perception seems to increase. The second is the experience of literally falling, in this case from the Golden Gate Bridge, as director Olson takes a look at the bridge’s history of suicides and makes the case for the construction of a suicide barrier. 

For complete schedules of the films in these series, go to www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.