Introduction - SEAsite - Northern Illinois University

Friday, May 20, 2005
PROGRAM A
PROGRAM B
Film Ftival
PROGRAM C
Visual Arts Building, Room 100
8:25 pm
Luk Isan (A Child of the
Northeast)
Run time: 115 min. Language: Lao Isan
with English subtitles
Director: Choroen Lampungporn
Producer: Kunawut
Thailand, 1991
Luk Isan or A Child of the Northeast is
about a year in the life of a village in
Northeast Thailand during the 1930’s. It
is also about a world scarcely known in
the West: the world of “Isan,” which is
what the natives call their corner of Thailand.
This movie is based on Khampoun
Bountavee award-winning novel which
the author based on the memories of his
own childhood in Isan during the depths
of the Depression. The loving, courageous
family at the center of novel include a boy
named Koun, who is about eight years old;
his sisters Yeesoun, and Bounlai, two; and
their parents, whose names we never learn.
They are called simply “Koun’s mother”
and “Koun’s father,” even by their friends
and family. Khampoun also introduces a
wider, equally unforgettable family: the
relatives and neighbors who live in Koun’s
village. It is their bravery, their goodness
of heart, and above all, their indestructible,
earthy sense of humor, that shape the boy
Koun’s perception of the world, and of his
purpose in it. (A Child of the Northeast,
translated by Susan F. Kepner).
Visual Arts Building, Room 102
Becoming American
Run time: 60 min. Language: English/
Hmong, USA, 1982
8:25 pm
Hang Sou, his wife and child, sister-in-law,
and her five children—a strongly united
Hmong tribal family—await resettlement
in a refugee camp in northern Thailand.
As victims of the secret war in Laos and
its political aftermath, they have lived for
six years in this rural, impoverished camp.
When the Hangs are informed that they
will be allowed to immigrate to the United
States, a twelve-thousand-mile odyssey
begins. Becoming American provides a rare
insight into the lives of these brave refugees
and celebrates their spirit of survival.
9:30 pm
Letter Back Home
Run time: 15 min.
Language: Lao with English subtitles
Directors: Nith Lacroix & Sang
Thepkaysone
Producer: Nith Lacroix, USA, 1994
An honest and compelling look at life in
San Francisco’s Tenderloin district for Lao
and Cambodian youth. Tough and with attitude,
they long for home while also carving
out a life in their neighborhood. Through
this bittersweet Letter Back Home, you can
feel the history, resilience and strength in
these youth. This video was brought back
to Laos to show the Lao youth at various
temples and villages of one aspect of refugee
teens living in the United States.
Second Prize, Chicago Asian American
Film & Video Contest
Best New Vision Documentary Award,
Berkeley Video Festival
National PBS broadcast
Visual Arts Building, Room 103
9:00 pm
Death of a Shaman
Run time: 57 min. Language: English
Director: Richard Hall Producer: Fahm
Fong Saeyang
USA, 2002
In Death of a Shaman, Fahm Saeyang
responds to her father’s unsettled life and
death by taking a reverse journey to examine
the heartbreaking path he took from
respectability to hopelessness-and from
Southeast Asia to America-in a heartfelt
personal mission to understand his tragic
story. This dual journey helps Death of a
Shaman examine with painful honesty how
Fahm’s Mien immigrant family suffered
through a 20 year ordeal of poverty, racism,
religions, drugs, jail, and the murder of a
family member. It is a chronicle of a darker
side of the pursuit of the American dream
that affected many of the 40,000 Mien who
came from a primitive life in the mountains
of Southeast Asia to America. Death of a
Shaman is also a moving account of Fahm’s
need to understand her father’s pain, and
a desire to figure out what will placate his
troubled spirit and her own.