The Reel Asian Film Festival: queer splinters that lodge under your skin

12 Nov 2020 - Photos: courtesy of publicist

"A unique showcase of contemporary Asian cinema and work from the Asian diaspora," the Reel Asian Film Festival features hundreds of films, shorts, panel discussions, and an awards ceremony. Because of the pandemic it is all online. Conversely our online life has influenced the cinematic artform with a truly international audience and art - Gif Roulette - adapting to a digital world. There is also a significant amount of queer content as LGBTQ Asian filmmakers claim their space in an industry that has often ignored them. 

Vivek Shraya's Reviving the Roost is a vibrant ode to Edmonton's largest and most popular, though now defunct, gay bar. Told using animation in the style of old school neon signage, Reviving the Roost is eye candy to the extreme which contrasts nicely with Shraya's bittersweet narration. Gay bars offer us community but are also hotbeds of gossip, intrigue and an infinite number of hierarchies. For an Asian teenager there is a specific layer and Shraya poetically deconstructs the way the LGBTQ community offers sanctuary but also has a restrictive door policy. Shraya realizes that "being oppressed doesn't prevent you from oppressing others," but cathartically transcends it though the joy of dance shattering cliques. Reviving the Roost is a joyous and thought-provoking burst of political fun. 

The New York City bar BUBBLE_T gets a hagiographic treatment in Dancing On My Own. One of the founders says BUBBLE_T was created to be a "celebration of being Asian, queer and creative." And in reaction to the "queer sense of beauty" being "white-based." The clubgoers, including Saturday Night Live's Bowen Young, are indeed fabulous and take to the stage with glee and glitter. The film is wrapped around a comedic coming out story with a young lesbian fleeing the suburbs for NYC, discovering BUBBLE_T, dying her hair blonde and then reconciling with her religious mother. She is also completely upstaged by the club kidz who not only steal focus but tuck it under their arms and sashay away with it. Where Reviving the Roost is blunt about internal queer community tensions, Dancing On My Own is consistently uplifting until the credits when all the participants also get their Instagram handles tagged on their names. It is an online world.

The very short Gay as in Happy: A Queer Anti-Tragedy is a middle finger to racism, homophobia and specifically transphobia. The narrator announces that "My pronouns are 'she,' 'her' and 'hers' and this is a 'fuck you.'" Her "fuck you" is echoed by a chorus of queers who are as fabulous in their own way as the BUBBLE_Ters. There's not much more to Gay as in Happy: A Queer Anti-Tragedy than defiance and self-affirmation but it's impossible not to root for a shouted "Fuck everyone who still uses gay as an insult."

The same wish fulfilment is the heart and soul of Super Zee where an IT support worker discovers her superpowers and takes down an obnoxious male boss who reeks of white privilege and spouts it. Again, it is impossible not to root for her and that is very satisfying. Superheroes are slowly coming in different forms and while Super Zee's brand of vigilantism won't be joining the Marvel or DC universe in the immediate future, there is hope in the power of origami birds and 'Sparkle Alerts.'

The queer feature Goodbye Mother is a romantic comedy that unspools to become a melodrama. The heir to a clay tile dynasty returns to Vietnam for the moving of his father's tomb. The family expects he is also coming to acquire a wife, but he has a very handsome young man on his arm. Hijinks, conflict and a steamy shower sex scene erupt. While the plotline revolving around coming out is dated (for a Canadian audience) and more than a little predictable, the performances are extraordinary. Vo Dien Gia Huy as the boyfriend has an expressive heartthrob face and is subtle and irresistible. He plays particularly well with Nsut Le Thien who steals the entire film as the grandmother who has senile dementia but is also the wisest of them all. Hong Dao holds it all together as the mother who is the tense calm in the middle of the storm. Emotions flicker across her face in a performance that could have been Joan Crawford diva but becomes so much more.

Lola's Wake doesn't have any explicit gay content but it is a taut short horror film about family obligations and facing one's demons. A literal demon. A little girl alone in a funeral home tasked with protecting her grandmother's corpse is a perfect recipe for tension and Lola's Wake plays it succinctly and with skill. Horror films often play with traditions as restrictive structures or haunting legacies, and in this case a longing to escape the diaspora and return to the Philippines gives Lola's Wake extra heft.

A festival is usually a gathering place and this year all of our gathering places are splintered into individual, isolated participation. Fortunately Reel Asian contains lots of intriguing splinters.