Curves on a blossoming young woman can be sexy, but not if you are told you have too many of them. Real Women Have Curves is a humorous and warmhearted look at a Mexican American teenage girl coming of age in a boiling cauldron of cultural expectations, class constrictions, family duty, and her own personal aspirations. In this auspicious debut, Patricia Cardoso gives us a cast of characters we very rarely see - working class Latina woman - with refreshing human complexity.

Ana, a first generation Mexican American teenager living in East Los Angeles, has just graduated from high school. Because she is a talented writer, a caring teacher urges her to apply to college. Ana secretly is excited about the possibility, tubu her overbearing and hyper-critical mother, Carmen, insists that it is time for her to help provide for the family by working in her sister's sewing factory, it seems as if Ana's fate is unhappily sealed, but her indomitable will to reach beyond a sweatshop life eventually leads her to burst, defiant and resplendent, through every restriction on her life.

America Ferrara and Lupe Ontiveros are wonderful as Ana and her mom as they deal with all of the unexpected curves life throws at them. Based on the play by Josephina Lopez, which is rooted in her own experience, Real Women Have Curves gives a fresh new voice to the yearnings of Chicana women struggling against insecurities to love themselves and find respect in the world.

Shari Frilot, 2002 Sundance Film Festival. 

With a rare film that only a literate filmmaker could create, Heather Rae demonstrates sophisticated craft and builds an Indigenous aesthetic essential to the intellectual exploration of the power and fragility of an Indigenous icon, John Trudell. From the first frames, Rae constructs an impressionistic biopic, weaving images, thought, music, and human energy into cinematic power.

With Trudell's lifeline as the narrative thread, viewers journey in and out of modern Indian history and politics, exploring the earth-infused philosophy and motivations of Trudell's radical acts and thought, as well as reliving the loss and heartache that prompted his activism to evolve abruptly into artistic expression. Complementing Rae's stunning images are Trudell's poetic musings, set to electric guitars and drumbeats echoing from the earth and blurring lines between the conscious and the unconscious.

John Trudell's cogent words deconstruct an all-too-familiar world, and he prepares his listeners often by saying, "If I say anything you don't agree with, let's just leave it at that, that we don't agree." With this in mind, Rae gently sculpts the space between all things John Trudell and the rest of us, slowly and deliberately revealing the soul of a rare man who is one of the most influential Native activists of our times.

— Bird Runningwater, Sundance Institute

A successful visual artist working in post-9/11 Manhattan, Asya lives the life of the hip and glamorous, replete with exclusive art parties, supermodels, and stretch limousines, while she carefully follows the situation in the Middle East on television. Out partying one night, Asya learns that her childhood friend, Faisal, has disappeared—the victim of a purported CIA abduction. That same night, she meets Javier, a sexy Mexican PhD student, and romance blossoms. Javier finds Asya’s conspiracy theories overly paranoid—but nothing in Asya’s world is as it seems.

Zeina Durra’s atmospheric debut feature is a splendidly alluring and intelligent look at the way the war on terror seeps into the texture of everyday American life. Gorgeous 16 mm grain imbues the film with an anachronistic feel that interestingly evokes times past. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is an exceptional work and heralds the arrival of Durra as an exciting new directorial talent.

Sophie seems to have an idyllic life; she's the perfect Caucasian housewife for Andrew, her successful Asian American husband. Their relationship is put to the test, though, when she can't conceive a child. To save her marriage, Sophie does something desperate. She initiates a bold and clandestine venture with Jihah, an illegal immigrant from Korea. Sophie soon finds this new arrangement spiraling into a situation that may actually destroy what it was meant to liberate.

In Never Forever, writer/director Gina Kim arranges every shot with a calculating eye, building a step-by-step urgency. Her story is rich and her filmmaking lean and precise. Kim creates the perfect tone, right down to a climate of extreme repression where the sexual energy is nearly combustible. The insightful art direction and costume design are marvelously refined for an independent film. And Vera Farmiga's incredible performance as Sophie is a true gift. Her ethereal beauty--crystal blue eyes and porcelain skin--gives her the appearance of a rare doll, which isn't too far from the pampered existence she represents. As the perfect counterpart to two gifted leading men, her mastery of Sophie's gradual transformation makes Never Forever an unforgettable cinematic experience.

When 13-year-old Vanessa experiences her first breakup, she rebounds by following the boy to his stifling prep school, where she receives the only minority scholarship for her Yup’ik background. Landing at the bottom of the school’s social ladder and confined to the weight room during P.E., she begins to rally with the other school misfits, including an animal-loving boy with overbearing parents, a girl named Nothing, and a pathological liar claiming Puff Daddy is her father. Vanessa’s attempts to find herself and win back the love of her life flounder, until she’s presented with an opportunity to captain the oddball team for the school’s bastardized version of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics—the Snowstorm Survivor competition.

Suzi Yoonessi’s delicious debut makes the life of her Alaskan teenage heroine as colorful and sweet as a snow cone. Confected with heartbreak and humor, Vanessa journeys from the fantastical world of unicorns, rainbows, and shadow puppets to the uncertain reality of adult complications, discovering that real friends can be just as fantastic as imaginary ones. A true underdog story, Yoonessi’s tale of compassion and camaraderie is certain to recall one’s own bittersweet memories of the delicate transition to adolescence.

-Jonathan Wysocki, Los Angeles Film Festival, 2009

Raya, a teenager with medical-school aspirations, can no longer afford the tuition at her private high school. When she returns to her tough neighborhood, she dreams of returning to her school, but she needs money. Opportunity knocks when she learns about a step-dancing competition with a top prize of $50,000. She dances her way onto her friend Bishop's all-male JSJ crew and shakes things up as the only girl. The other guys are wary, and the girls are jealous, but Raya only has eyes for the prize and tries to stay above the drama. When she breaks rank and shows off during a preliminary competition, Bishop ignores the chemistry developing between them and throws her out of the JSJ. Raya must either find a new crew or win back Bishop's trust.

Set under the oppressive gray skies of a Toronto winter, How She Move is a well-drawn portrait of a girl who learns that winning always comes at a price. The energizing hip-hop soundtrack fuels exciting and inspiring step-dancing sequences, where characters connect, let aggressions out, and find the strength to escape their bleak surroundings. Authentic performances help turn this coming-of-age story into a gritty, realistic, urban-dance film.

With nods to Frank Capra, ghost stories, murder mysteries, and screwball comedies, Gurinder Chadha whips up an irreverent caper about the pressures on Indian women to tie the knot. Set in West London (Bend It Like Beckham territory), the film centers on Mrs. Sethi, a doting Punjabi mother obsessively seeking a suitor for her appealing, but (heaven forbid!) rapidly aging, daughter, Roopie. When a string of curious murders involving poisonous curries and chapati dough begins to rattle the neighborhood, things really start to heat up. As detectives and ghosts trample through the Sethi household, Roopie’s love life gets an injection of excitement, too. Nothing in this supernatural escapade is, as it seems as spicy truths unspool and fate takes its madcap course.

A top-notch cast, including celebrated Indian actress Shabana Azmi, sexy Sendhil Ramamurthy, and a zany Sally Hawkins, breathe life into Chadha’s clever tale about appreciating what’s right under our noses—with a little help from the Hereafter

— Caroline Libresco, Sundance Film Festival

Set in the idyllic hills of northern California, Jennifer Phang’s marvelously original first feature, Half-Life is a supernormal tale about self-absorbed and disillusioned suburbanites who live in a futuristic time of natural disasters, suffocating air quality, and accelerating global cataclysms. Single mom Suara Wu and her two kids, Pam and Timothy, struggle to rebuild their family in the presence of a sinister, but charming, interloper. Pam seeks refuge in her object of desire, a young hipster named Scott who, in turn, attempts to jar hid fundamentalist parents out of their denial of his gay identity. Timothy, meanwhile, stumbles upon a way to develop and hone paranormal powers that he summons to alter everyone’s reality. Modern and philosophical, Half-Life masterfully blends menacing rage with tenderness and vulnerability of youth to create a tale that injects an empowering and preserving hopefulness into the family’s fatalistic fears of a disintegrating world. A visually ambitious accomplishment filled with gorgeous cinematography, handcrafted animation, and expertly concocted faux news reports, this auspicious directorial debut is without precedent and firmly establishes Jennifer Phang as an exciting talent to watch. 

-Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival

During WWII, after the US was bombed by the Japanese in Pearl Harbor, the US government ‘relocated’ Japanese Americans living in the US seizing their property and houses. Japanese American director Rea Tajiri recalls her parents experiences during internment through personal and cultural memories. History and Memory is a film that, through traces and fragments of images and poetry, unravels a history of memories that were denied and distorted by the official history that America presented through Hollywood motion pictures and film footage.

-Kim Seon-A, 12^th International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul

No fishing expedition, this first feature is an insider view of lesbian life in the nineties by a writer and filmmaker team who are as a good at angst as they are at irony. Go Fish has already been dubbed a “dyke slacker” pic for its low-budget, black-and-white chronicling of daily hopes, fears, and banalities. At once gritty and lyrical, it tracks an interlinked cast of characters (most of them played by nonprofessionals) through a fanciful girl-meets-girl saga.

Max is looking for love. Her roommate, Kia, already has it in the person of Evy, who lives at home with her mom, still trying to shake off her ex-husband. Then there’s Ely, Kia’s student and seemingly available. Ely shares a place with Daria, the quintessential dyke about town, constantly in and out of women’s beds and hearts. Kia thinks Max would like Ely: Daria thinks Ely should like Max. Everyone schemes. We’re treated to a date, a dinner party, pride, honor, friendship, laundry, nail clipping – and, of course, sex.

There’s an innocence about the characters that’s usually missing in Lesbian Chic coverage: these women look more like the twenty-something figures in underground video or Alison Bechdel’s cult comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Go Fish begins just about where coming-out film used to end: all the women are dykes, and sex is on everybody’s mind. Since it’s the lesbian universe, so is romance. Seriocomic and navigated by a wistful narrator, an unlikely chorus of elders, and an assured cinematic ability to confer grace upon lesbian-identity escapades, Go Fish is the film to watch out for.

(B. Ruby Rich, 1994 Sundance Film Festival - http://history.sundance.org/films/234)