Festival 2022
Richard Fung Double Bill – Orientations: Lesbian & Gay Asians
Canada, 1984
DocumentaryQ&A
Directed by
Richard Fung
Richard Fung
Running time
56 min mins
56 min mins
Richard Fung’s seminal 1985 film was the first documentary to explore the perspectives of queer Asians in North America, featuring interviews with fourteen lesbian women and gay men of different Asian backgrounds. The film captures pivotal moments in Toronto’s history, and presents an intimate portrait of the texture of queer lives and politics at that time. Its themes include the process of coming out; homosexuality within Asian communities; understanding racism within the lesbian, gay, and feminist communities; and cultural self-assertion through art. Active in Canadian LGBT organizations such as Lesbians of Colour and Gay Asians Toronto, the participants’ commitment and outspokenness challenge the stereotype of passive Asians. Making a case for the importance of different communities working together in allyship, Orientations enables its interviewees to speak about the ways that being queer and Asian have shaped who they are.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director Richard Fung.
Tickets
Currently unavailable
Director Bio
Richard Fung is a Toronto-based video artist, writer, theorist and educator. His work comprises a series of challenging videos on subjects ranging from the role of the Asian male in gay pornography, to colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, AIDS, and his own family history. His work, which include My Mother’s Place (1990), Sea in the Blood (2000) and Uncomfortable (2005), has been widely screened internationally, and have been broadcast in Canada and the USA.
Additional info
A double bill of work by director Richard Fung: his seminal 1984 documentary Orientations: Lesbian & Gay Asians, exploring the perspectives of queer Asians in North America, and Re: Orientations, made over 30 years later, in which he revisits some of the original participants.