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Shorts 1: City & State – Revelations
Synopsis
The six shorts in this program represent distinct modes of storytelling through film, while reflecting the diversity and creativity of our region. Featuring works by Dustin Nakao-Haider, McKenzie Chinn, Linh Tran, Tetsuya Mariko, Ian Kelly, and Brian Zahm.
In Ethan Lim: Cambodian Futures (U.S.), we follow a chef with a mission to share and elevate Cambodian food using his family’s recipes. Two friends living on the south side of Chicago find their friendship tested when one reveals a tightly-held secret in A Real One (U.S.). In Video Funeral (U.S.), two Vietnamese sisters bond over their father’s death and funeral. Two small-time thieves encounter an abandoned car with a small child in the backseat in Before Anyone Else (Japan, U.S.). A grandson uses animation to reconstruct a loved one’s lost memories in the documentary Soft Lights and Silver Shadows (U.S.). Photosynthesis (U.S.) takes the viewer on a 3D journey in the form of a 1960s perceptual art-inspired experience.
Screenings & Events
Virtual Screening
This program will be available to stream from October 16 at 12:00pm CT to October 22 at 11:59pm CDT.
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Sponsors
Accessibility Partner
Live Captioning
![Chef Ethan Lim and his mother work in the kitchen together.](https://cinemachicago.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FF59_short_EthanLimCambodianFutures_1200x600.jpg)
Ethan Lim: Cambodian Futures [short film]
Synopsis
A finely observed portrait of celebrated Chicago chef Ethan Lim as he develops his restaurant, Hermosa, this short doc touches on issues of family, culinary culture, and displacement due to war. Born into a refugee camp and brought to the US at a young age as his family fled the Khmer Rouge’s violent coup in Cambodia, Lim crafts dishes that feature authentic Cambodian flavors, imagining how the country’s cuisine might have developed had it not been interrupted by civil war.
This film screens as part of the Shorts 1: City & State – Revelations program.