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Aging

Acting Our Age
Gurinder Chadha
1992, 30 min., Color, UK
This humorous and thought-provoking film documents the residents of a South Asian home for the elderly in Britain. Director Gurinder Chadha assists the residents in directing their own video. The resu...

Crocodile Conspiracy
Zeinabu Irene Davis
1986, 13 min., Color, US/Cuba
This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's homeland of Cuba. In the face of unexpected political and...

Double Exposure
Kit-Yin Snyder
2003, 26 min., Color
A poetically inspired documentary, exploring the conflicts and contradictions of the "cultural statelessness" experienced by a first generation Chinese-American immigrant. It uses a series of first-pe...

Dreaming Rivers
Martina Attille
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1988, 35 min., Color, UK
Evoking the colonial experience of Caribbean immigrants in Britain, DREAMING RIVERS presents an impressionist rendering of a middle-aged Black on the past, present and future from her death bed. Atten...

Fei Tien: Goddess in Flight
Christine Choy
1983, 23 min., Color
Based on the play, "Pigeons," by Ginny Lim, this film focuses on the meeting between an older immigrant and younger American-born woman living in Chinatown. The linkages in their pasts and possible fu...

Fuori/Outside
Kym Ragusa
1997, 12 min., Color, US
In FUORI/OUTSIDE the videomaker, an American woman of African and Italian descent, examines her relationship with her Italian American grandmother. The lives of the two women are inextricably linked t...

Here to Stay
ManSee Kong
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2008, 7 min., Color, US
Illustrates the effects of gentrification in Manhattan’s Chinatown as an elderly man and fellow tenants in endangered single-room occupancy building await the results of an anti-eviction lawsuit. A TW...

Hito Hata: Raise the Banner
Duane Kubo & Robert Nakamura
Producer: Visual Communications
1980, 90 min., Color, US
This poignant drama chronicles the contributions and hardships of Japanese Americans from the turn of the century to the late seventies. This history is told by Oda, a feisty Issei--one of the elderly...

In Bed with a Mosquito
Sarah Frank
2008, 18 min., Color, US
Betty Brassell, a 78-year-old retired telephone operator born and raised in rural Georgia, spends nearly every day - rain or shine - protesting in the streets of New York City, her walker currently em...

Ki-Hi-Ka Ste': Life of Chief George Tall Chief
Amy Tall Chief
2010, 63 min., Color, US
Ki-Hi-Ka Ste' is a heartfelt story of one man's journey through life, the many lives he impacted and the legacy that he will leave behind. At age 93, George Eves Tall Chief is currently the oldest me...

Mama Gloria
Luchina Fisher
Producer: Yvonne Welbon & Zainab Ali
2020, 76 min., Color, US
At a time when Black transgender women face escalating violence and make up the majority of transgender people murdered each year, Gloria Allen’s story is an inspiring portrait of aging seldom seen. B...

Mother
Jun seek TAE
2011, 102 min., Color, South Korea
MOTHER follows labor activist Lee So-seon, who for over 40 years organized for workers’ rights in South Korea. A courageous, yet humble woman, Lee’s activism began the day her son, iconic labor activi...

Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy In/On Exile
Maryam Sepehri
Producer: Maryam Sepehri
2017, 61 min., Color, US/Iran
For Iranian scholar Hamid Naficy, exile is like an elevator that runs between “two cultural poles, two memories, two lives.” Naficy belongs to the Iranian generation that lived through the modernizati...

Older Women and Love
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1987, 26 min., Color, US
Using interviews and dramatizations, this film achieves a touching and often humorous look at social attitudes towards relationships between older women and younger men. The filmmakers are involved on...

Re:Orientations
Richard Fung
2016, 68 min., Color, Canada
A fascinating look into the lives and thoughts of seven Queer Pan-Asian Canadians as they look back on ORIENTATIONS, a 1984 documentary in which they featured. How have they changed? And how has the w...

Repatriation
Dong-won Kim
Producer: PURN Productions
2003, 149 min., Color, South Korea
In the spring of 1992 documentary filmmaker Dong-won Kim met Cho Chang-son and Kim Seak-hyoung, two North Koreans arrested by South Korean authorities years before. Convicted of spying for the North, ...

Rest in Peace
Jeff Mao
1990, 15 min., BW, US
In this subtle and comic narrative, a young Asian American is pressured by his wife, family and "tradition" to grant the last wish of a dying relative. First, however, he must decipher a note written ...

Salty Dog Blues
Al Santana & Denise B Santiago
2012, 52 min., Color/BW, US
SALTY DOG BLUES features a group of men and women of color who served in the United States Merchant Marine from 1937 – 1989. This nine-year project examines their development as a multi-racial and int...

Su-Casa Senior Media Production Workshop Films: 2020 Films
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2020, 24 min., Color, US
From April to June, 2020, a dozen senior filmmakers learned about film theory, film scripting, and were taught to film and edit on their smart phones. Originally planned as an in-person workshop to be...

Wataridori: Birds of Passage
Robert Nakamura
Producer: Visual Communications
1974, 37 min., Color, US
Lyricism and visual beauty are evident in this film as four Issei (first generation Japanese Americans) describe a collective history through their personal memories. The filmmaker paints the canvas o...


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