Dumbarton Bridge
Sunday
Jan 9@100pm Lumiere
(second showing Wednesday
Jan 12@ 5:15pm at the Fine Arts)
Charles
Koppelman
(1999,
35mm, 98 mins)
sponsored by Rainbow Grocery
Refreshingly placing universal themes of isolation, belonging, and memory into the realms of the African-American working class and Vietnamese immigrant culture, Koppelman's debut film displays a vision of Bay Area life as original, reflective, and lyrically melancholy as its Coltrane-rich jazz soundtrack. Shed, a black Vietnam veteran working along the desolate saltwater flatlands of South San Francisco, has his isolated present and tormented past torn asunder when his Amerasian daughter Ming suddenly arrives from Thailand. While Ming searches for a future, intricately maneuvering through San Jose's Vietnamese community and learning to pronounce "bitch" and "hella", Shed must learn to confront and conquer his own troubled past. With cinematography, acting, and score keyed to its languid, sweetly introspective tone, DUMBARTON BRIDGE creates its own somber grace, one fashioned from a poetic fusion of cinema and jazz yet rooted in the downbeat, hardened realities of life along the city's forgotten edges. --Jason Sanders.
In Attendance writer/director/producer Charles Koppleman and cast members
Contact Charles Koppelman, 2600 10th St Berkeley, CA 94710 koppelm@well.com 510.486.1954
Animation
On
The Run
Belial
(1999, 35mm,
1:52 min)
Contact Belial, 505-1360 Hornby St., Vancouver, BC V62 2L8 b_35@hotmail.com 614.608. 1566