We’ve arrived at the last episode of Saturday School Season 8, which explored the history of Asian American sci-fi films! And we end this semester of boundary-pushing imagination with a… documentary! Pailin Wedel’s “Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice” from 2018, which is available to watch on Netflix. “Hope Frozen” is about a Thai family who decide to have their two-year-old daughter Einz’s body cryogenically preserved in Arizona after she dies of brain cancer. While to some, it may seem like they're embarking on a fringe pseudoscience -- or alternately, that they're forcing their daughter to ..read more

Where were we going with a Saturday School season delving into the history of Asian American sci-fi? In some ways, all episodes prior were leading up to Jennifer Phang's "Advantageous," a 2015 feature film that started as a 2012 short film in the Futurestates series. Often, Asian Americans and other people of color in Hollywood sci-fi represent a post-racial future. But what if in near future, these inequities are not gone but intensified? Jacqueline Kim (who co-wrote the feature film expansion with Phang) plays Gwen, the spokesperson of a cosmetics company that wants to replace her with someo ..read more

On this week’s Saturday School, we’re continuing our exploration of Asian American sci-fi with a second episode on Futurestates, a groundbreaking sci-fi short film series spearheaded by Karim Ahmad that ran from 2010 to 2014 on public television and online. Before Black Mirror was another anthology series set in the future, Futurestates gave directors – including many notable Asian American filmmakers - opportunities to tell unique stories that imagined the future. Last week, we looked at Greg Pak’s short films, and this week, we delve into Tanuj Chopra’s shorts “Pia” and “Teacher in a Box,” a ..read more

Throughout this season of Saturday School, we've been exploring the history of Asian American sci-fi films. So far, we've mostly focused on indie films from the 1980s to 2000s that overcame limited budgets and technologies to show what creative genre storytelling about Asian Americans could look like. Where was it leading? What would be possible if there was some organized funding around these stories? In 2010, the public TV and web series FutureStates, spearheaded by Karim Ahmad, commissioned filmmakers to create short films that imagined today's social issues in tomorrow's America. We're goi ..read more

Before "Shang-Chi," before "Ms. Marvel," Asian American film gave us the superhero Lumpia Man. On the latest episode of Saturday School (where this season we're exploring Asian American sci-fi), we revisit "Lumpia" (2003) and its sequel "Lumpia with a Vengeance" (2020). "Lumpia" was shot in director Patricio Ginelsa's hometown of Daly City with his high school friends. In this comic book movie, narrated by Joy Bisco of "The Debut," the Americanized Filipinos are bullying the Filipino FOBs. But luckily, the FOBs are protected by Lumpia Man, a silent teenager whose weapon is lumpia. It's a charm ..read more

This is the 9th (and 2nd to last) episode of our 5th season of Saturday School, and those who've been there with us from the beginning can probably tell that we start to get a little senioritis-y at this point in the semester. So in this episode, about Shanghai Calling by Daniel Hsia, we spend about 7 minutes delivering what we promise: a comparison to A Great Wall, as we look at 2 films about Chinese Americans going back to China - one from 1986, the other from 2012 - and talk about what this says about geopolitics during the different time periods. And then we spend like 17 minutes straight ..read more

After a few weeks of exploring the grittier, more traumatic side of Asian Americans in Asia, this week's episode of Saturday School is a little more light-hearted and fun. We're revisiting the 2011 documentary "Big in Bollywood," which follows Omi Vaidya (at the time, your typical working but little-known LA actor) who lands the role of a lifetime. But it's not in Hollywood, it's in Bollywood, and he's the main antagonist in the new Aamir Khan film, 2009's "3 Idiots," which would end up breaking records as the highest grossing Indian film of its time. Because "Big in Bollywood" is made by Omi ..read more

This week's episode, as part of our season on Asian Americans in Asia, we revisit the 2003 documentary "Refugee," by Spencer Nakasako, which follows three Cambodian American young men as they go back to Cambodia for the first time to confront their family histories. Like most of Nakasako's films of the time, the documentary makes use of the subjects' personal video diaries and Nakasako empowers Mike Siv and his friends Paul Maes and David Mark to pick up the camera themselves and film their own stories. Mike Siv, who's 24 at the time, has been told his whole life that he and his mother escaped ..read more

For all you overachievers out there, Saturday School hosted an AP Honors discussion group with 5 people who have seen Crazy Rich Asians in theaters 5 TIMES *OR MORE.* The #CRA5timersclub. Like the SNL 5-timers club, but more Asian. Spoilers galore. And full disclosure, Ada's only seen it 3 times, so she's both hosting and crashing the party. Brian has only seen it once, so he was not invited. If you're obsessed with the movie as much as Phil Yu, David Magdael, Cheryl K, Minji Chang and Marvin Yueh are, we'd recommend first listening to Crazy Rich Asians episodes of our fellow Potluck Podcast C ..read more

In this week's episode of Saturday School, we're going back to 1993 to revisit Jon Moritsugu's Terminal USA, his over-the-top, grotesque, drug-filled take on a Japanese American sitcom family. Moritsugu plays dual roles: twins Katsumi, a punk drug dealer, and Marvin, the repressed model minority. Their sister Holly is not as pure as the all-American cheerleader vibe she gives off, the father has some issues with murderous rage, and the mother makes a barter to have sex with the pizza boy, under the condition that he gives her extra cheese bread. Plus, they're waiting for grandpa, who is bed-ri ..read more