Film Image
Imagining Place
Anita Chang
1999
Color
35 minutes
US
English

Imagining Place

For one year, with a curious eye and a curious mind, the filmmaker asks herself and a cross section of individuals, "What does belonging feel like in America?" Amidst increasing social, technological and environmental fragmentation, Imagining Place invites audiences to examine their external and internal sense of place.
Director's Note: As a recent member of the diaspora, I have always been curious as to what belonging feels like for people. It is also no coincidence that as we enter the new millennium, the very idea of belonging is being heavily tested here, and more immediately and gravely, abroad. IMAGINING PLACE speaks to those individuals for whom the question of belonging is most immediate, such as immigrants, exiles or individuals who live on the margins because of physical, social and psychological borders. However, it is also a film that serves as a wake-up call to Americans who are experiencing fragmentation or disconnection in their lives, be it with the environment, their social networks, or with themselves. This is the film that I have spent the two years making and feel its message has been critical in my life and I believe it can be so for others as well.

PRODUCER/DIRECTOR/WRITER/CAMERA/SOUND/EDITOR Anita Chang
FEATURING Biagio Azzarelli, Constance Bostic, Lori Conwell, Michael Fontinot, Daniel Golding, Keiko Koide, Reginald Martinez, Fernando Ona, Erica Peng, Jacob Schonfield
ORIGINAL MUSIC Bundy K Brown
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Reviews
"Through personal reflections and interviews--sometimes bittersweet, sometimes comical, but always vivid--the filmmaker captures the sense of ephemerality, poignancy and longing we imbue in the spaces we inhabit and the people who connect us to the earth." - San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
What is powerful in Anita’s films, and specifically in Imagining Place is that she actively experiments with moving images that wander and wonder about place and specifically about “home” asking for a year: “What does belonging feel like in America?” In continuous, meditative questioning she experiments visualizing place while walking on earth, footsteps seeking, finding anywhere: ultimately at a loss as to how we are tethered to the earth, shaped to belong in the impermanence of things. - Fernando F. Ona, Anthropologist
Awards

• Los Angeles Asian New Visions Award
Screenings
• Women Make Waves Film Festival/Tour
• Taipei Artist Village
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
• San Francisco Cinematheque
• Kearny Street Workshop
• Blockhouse Portland
• Chicago Filmmaker’s
• Chicago Asian Showcase
• Human Rights Film Festival
• Cornell Cinema
• Toronto Environmental
• United Nations Association
• Boston Tour (MIT, Emerson, Museum School of Fine Art, Tufts, UMASS Amherst)
• San Diego Asian Film Festival
• NextFrame Int’l
• New York Int’l Asian Film Festival
• Athens Int’l Film Festival
• SF Juvenile Hall
• Berlin Medienwerkstat
• Women in the Director’s Chair
• Pacific Film Archive
• Walker Arts Center
• SF Int’l Asian American Film Festival
• NY Gay/Lesbian MIX Festival
• Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema
• Boulder Asian Film Festival
More Films by Subject and Genre
American Studies
Asian Pacific Islander Diaspora
Documentaries
Experimental & Avant-garde Films
Immigration & Exile
Race & Ethnicity Studies
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