This program explores the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, and how these genres can serve as tools to question and understand the world around us. Astria Suparak, curator, artist, and programmer of the 2024 Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series, will introduce the films.

Program:

Run time: Two hours and 26 min.
^* Looped in the Art Theater prior to screening
^† Part of Carnegie Museum of Art’s collection

Notes from guest film programmer, Astria Suparak

My first video, Virtually Asian (2021), looks at a common trope in mainstream science fiction: how white filmmakers create the appearance of an Asian-inflected world without hiring Asian people in any significant capacity, in front of or behind the camera. An oft-used excuse was that American audiences would not turn out for movies with an Asian lead. This racist rationalization overlooked numerous examples throughout film history: silent era heartthrob Sessue Hayakawa and icon Anna May Wong, martial arts stars such as Bruce Lee, the stoner buddy franchise Harold and Kumar with John Cho and Kal Penn, and the often white-coded Keanu Reeves and Latino-coded Lou Diamond Phillips. Since Virtually Asian’s release, a cluster of movies featuring actors and directors of Asian descent found wide success in the US, including Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s 2022 blockbuster Everything Everywhere All at Once, which became the most awarded film of all time. American audiences (which, it shouldn’t have to be said, include people of Asian descent) are not only willing to watch an Asian-led film, but also majority-Asian casts and stories that don’t uphold bootstrapper American Dream myths or respectability politics. Plus, this movie is weird. It centers a middle-aged Asian woman with a non-American accent, and it doesn’t heroicize narrow notions of masculinity. You can trace the filmmakers’ idiosyncratic, high-energy mixture of absurdity, bawdiness, joy, and physical comedy in the banger music video created years earlier for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s Turn Down for What. Evoking a similar fantasy world of maniacal joy and darkness, body horror, and 1980s/90s-kid homages, Paper Rad’s Welcome to My Homeypage (2002) precedes the program.

Registration

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Season Pass

New this year–save big with the Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series Season Pass! Each pass includes admission to all eight screenings. [swcheckout site="4" item="130654"]