Saturday School Podcast

As we've been exploring Asian American interracial cinema this season at Saturday School, we've covered a lot of heavy subject matter. But not everything related to cross-cultural storytelling is traumatic and existential. This week, we revisit the 1997 comedy "Fakin' da Funk," starring — are you ready for this? — Dante Basco, Pam Grier, Ernie Hudson, John Weatherspoon, Tatyana Ali, Margaret Cho,...

This week's episode is a rebroadcast of our Season 2 episode on Mira Nair's 1992 film "Mississippi Masala." Our second season was about "Asian Americans in Love," and this romantic drama. about an Indian Ugandan family in Mississippi, is also an example of a story that ties Asian American and African American history together. So as we explore the topic of "Asian American interracial cinema,"...

In this week’s Saturday School episode, in our season exploring Asian American interracial cinema, we look at the 1993 documentary “Sa-I-Gu” by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Christine Choy and Elaine Kim, as well as Kim-Gibson’s update 10 years later in 2003’s “Wet Sand: Voices From L.A.” Both films are available to watch for free on YouTube, courtesy of the Korean American Film Festival New York after they...

For this week's episode of Saturday School, where we're exploring Asian American interracial cinema, we have a special guest: Josslyn Luckett, assistant professor of cinema studies at New York University! We've invited her to our podcast to tell us about her research, which explores the beginnings of an affirmative action initiative at UCLA's film school in the late 1960s and early 1970s called Et...

Welcome back to Saturday School! This is our 7th season, and this semester, we'll be exploring Asian American interracial cinema. When we signed off last season, coronavirus had just taken hold and the nation had erupted with protests for George Floyd,  Breonna Taylor and Black Lives Matter. As racial tensions escalated, it had many Asian Americans grappling with questions like: What is our p...

Our final episode of Saturday School's sixth semester, where we explore Asian films about Asian America, is about the 2010 Karan Johar film "My Name Is Khan," which brings us full circle to the first episode of the season, where we explored Bollywood's earlier portrayal of Indian America in "Kal Ho Naa Ho." Over the last decade, no one ever thinks to ask Brian and I, or our special guests Rowena A...

For the second week in a row, Brian and I take you back to Dec 2019, when we recorded this and then didn't edit it for months cause that's the kind of responsible Saturday School hosts we are. It's a bittersweet episode and last minute addition to our syllabus after Godfrey Gao passed away last November, and we try to honor him through revisiting the 2017 Chinese romcom, "Love is a Broadway Hit."...

We accidentally took a months-long break, recorded our last few episodes of our season in Dec 2019, then accidentally took another break, and then coronavirus happened. But last week, Ada's daughter was back to Chinese school on Zoom, so we're back too.  In this week's episode, we continue our exploration of Asian films about Asian America through the 2007 Hwang Dong-hyuk film "Our Father," s...

On this week's Saturday School, we continue to explore Asian films about Asian America, diving head first into the international film festival/art film world with the 5 hour 15 minute Lav Diaz film "Batang West Side" from 2001. It's a film that takes place in the snowy New Jersey winter. A Filipino American cop Juan (Jose Torre) is investigating the murder of a Filipino American teenager Hanzel, a...

In this week’s Saturday School, we break our sixth season streak of epic, emotional and honorable love stories, and as we hit the turn of the century, we look at “Asian films about Asian Americans” from an entirely different, warped mirror. We’re talking about 1999’s “Gen X Cops” and 2000’s “Gen Y Cops,” which is like a who’s who of Asian American/Canadian/Australian actors who briefly ruled the H...

This week's episode of Saturday School continues our semester of tear-jerking romances... just kidding, our semester on Asian films about Asian Americans, and we've progressed semi-chronologically to the 1990s in the Philippines with Lea Salonga. 1995's "Sana Maulit Muli" stars Lea Salonga and Aga Muhlach as a young couple who hope to start the next stage of their lives in America in pursuit of a...

This week's Saturday School is about the 1987 Mabel Cheung-directed film "An Autumn's Tale," starring Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung. We revisit a period in the '80s after the British have made a deal to hand over Hong Kong to China in 1997, there is a fear of of losing freedoms, a wave of emigration and a curiosity about what it'd be like to be an overseas Chinese. "An Autumn's Tale" is about Hong...

This week's episode of Saturday School continues our Season 6 theme if exploring Asian films about Asian America, and we're looking at the 1978 Japanese film Take Me Away! (Furimukeba Ai), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi and starring both on-screen and off-screen couple Momoe Yamaguchi and Tomokazu Miura. It's a love story so sweeping that they are taken away to San Francisco, a city of love and esc...

We recorded the latest episode of Saturday School a while ago, but fitting that we’re posting it when I’m actually in Taiwan! This season, we’re exploring Asian films about Asian America, and this week, we’re looking at the 1970 Taiwanese film "Home Sweet Home," which gives a glimpse into why Taiwanese people of a certain generation would have wanted to come to America (masters and doctorate degre...

Season 6 of Saturday School (where we explore Asian films about Asian America) kicks off with us inviting one of our favorite people to talk about one of our favorite actors. Journalist Angilee Shah thought we were joking when we asked her to join us to discuss the 2003 film "Kal Ho Naa Ho," because 15 years of friendship hasn't taught her that we don't joke around about these things. "Kal Ho Naa...

It's our Season 5 finale of Saturday School, and in some ways, it's all been leading to the most famous Asian American of all time: Bruce Lee. In this episode, we discuss his films "The Big Boss" from 1971 and "Way of the Dragon" from 1972, as a way of highlighting the movies he made in Hong Kong that are specifically about the diaspora experience. "The Big Boss" takes place in Thailand, and "Way...

This is the 9th (and 2nd to last) episode of our 5th season of Saturday School, and those who've been there with us from the beginning can probably tell that we start to get a little senioritis-y at this point in the semester. So in this episode, about Shanghai Calling by Daniel Hsia, we spend about 7 minutes delivering what we promise: a comparison to A Great Wall, as we look at 2 films about Chi...

Thanks to film programmer, producer, YOMYOMF writer Anderson Le for being our guest on this week's episode of Saturday School. This semester, we're exploring Asian Americans in Asia, and this week, we're talking about the 2007 film, "The Rebel," directed by Charlie Nguyen starring Johnny Nguyen and Veronica Ngo. Turns out it's much more than a fun martial arts action period film with beautiful peo...

For this week's episode of Saturday School, we're revisiting one of Asian America's rare historical epics: Ham Tran's Journey from the Fall fr om 2006. There's really no other film like it. It's the story that starts with the Fall of Saigon and traces a family's harrowing journey to Orange County. But unlike most classic Hollywood movies about the Vietnam War, which are usually told from the persp...

In this week's Saturday School, we revisit the 2015 film Seoul Searching, which follows a group of teenagers sent by their parents to a government-sponsored summer camp in Korea for them to reconnect with their roots. However, according to the film's prologue, this real-life program in the 1980s (which director Benson Lee himself attended as a young man) was canceled after a few years cause the ki...

After a few weeks of exploring the grittier, more traumatic side of Asian Americans in Asia, this week's episode of Saturday School is a little more light-hearted and fun. We're revisiting the 2011 documentary "Big in Bollywood," which follows Omi Vaidya (at the time, your typical working but little-known LA actor) who lands the role of a lifetime. But it's not in Hollywood, it's in Bollywood, and...

On this week's episode of Saturday School, we're revisiting the 2005 thriller "Cavite" by Ian Gamazon and Neil dela Llana, which is a unique take on our exploration of Asian Americans in Asia. The film basically takes all the anxieties Asian Americans can feel when we go back to Asia -- the awkwardness of not speaking the language well, the feeling of being completely lost, the guilt over having t...

This week's episode, as part of our season on Asian Americans in Asia, we revisit the 2003 documentary "Refugee," by Spencer Nakasako, which follows three Cambodian American young men as they go back to Cambodia for the first time to confront their family histories. Like most of Nakasako's films of the time, the documentary makes use of the subjects' personal video diaries and Nakasako empowers Mi...

The second episode of Saturday School (Season 5) on Asian Americans in Asia is about the 2000 documentary "First Person Plural" by Deann Borshay Liem. It's a personal documentary about a Korean American adoptee who comes to realize she's not the person her American family thinks she is. And as she uncovers the mystery behind her identities, she brings her adoptive parents to Korea to meet her birt...

Saturday School - our podcast where we force your unwilling children to learn Asian American pop culture history - is back for Season 5, and this semester, we are exploring films that involve Asian Americans in Asia. We start with a 1957 episode of a TV documentary show called "Bold Journey," where the legendary Chinese American silent film star Anna May Wong shares footage she took when she visit...