Reunification 家庭團聚
:: UK PREMIERE ::
USA / 2015 / Colour / 85 mins
In Cantonese and English with Chinese and English subtitles
Dir. Alvin TSANG
LONDON
2022 / 03 / 21 (Mon) - 6:30 PM
Genesis Cinema, London
MANCHESTER
2022 / 04 / 05 (TUE) - 6:00 PM
Chapeltown Picture House, Manchester
Filmed over a 17-year period, this award-winning film gives an insider view on the contemporary Asian American immigrant experience, family psychology, and personal filmmaking. Director Alvin Tsang reflects on his family’s migration from Hong Kong to Los Angeles in the early 1980s – fraught with betrayal from his parent’s divorce, economic strife and communication meltdown between parents and children. This poetic exploration moves moodily across different channels and modes, bending into labour histories and Hong Kong’s colonial trajectories. Tsang turns the camera on his own family, cautiously prodding for answers, but fully acknowledging that the only closure he can get will be from deciding for himself how to move on.
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Alvin Tsang is a filmmaker and artist based in New York City. His work explores the more personal human experience to inform on bigger issues such as humanism, community and migration. Tsang's REUNIFICATION (2015), an award-winning documentary about memories of migration and Tsang’s once intact family, was praised for “explor[ing] the past with a Proustian sensitivity” (The Boston Globe), its “clear-eyed honesty” (Meredith Monk), and being “the film that’s come closest to feeling like a truly distinct Asian-American [film] language” (Salon). Tsang is currently working on its sequel, WHEN HOME IS ELSEWHERE (2022), which reflects on the life of Tsang's “minimalist” father. It is sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and received grants from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and Queens Council on the Arts (QCA). Tsang was an editing assistant for THAT’S MY FACE (2001), a Berlinale's Ecumenical Prize winner by Thomas Allen Harris that explores the mythical African “face” within the African diaspora. Tsang served as a co-producer and post-supervisor for Ermena Vinluan’s award-winning documentary, TEA & JUSTICE (2007), which looks at the very first female Asian-American NYPD officers on the force. His shorts include FISH (2010) and PRESERVATION (2011). He is currently collaborating with artist Siyan Wong on her FIVE CENTS A CAN art exhibitions (2019-2022) by creating a “gold mountain” and several other conceptual installations out of 5,000+ gold soda cans to shed light on the people (mainly immigrants and elderly) who must collect cans and bottles for a living in this land of plenty.
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Winner of Special Jury Prize — San Diego Asian Film Festival 2015
In-competition for Best Doc Silver Award — California Film Awards 2016
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DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival 2016 — Washington, D.C.
Hong Kong Independent Film Festival 2016 — Hong Kong
Queens World Film Festival 2016 — NYC
Hong Kong Contemporary Film Festival 2016 — NYC
Macau Film Festival 2016 — Macao
