Season 4, Ep. 5: Nguyen Tan Hoang short films
We probably had a little too much fun with our latest episode of Saturday School as we continue to explore Asian American "troublemakers" in film. We look back at professor/filmmaker Nguyen Tan Hoang's experimental videos from the '90s and early 2000s, where he "pirates" Hollywood film, Vietnamese karaoke videos, and gay pornography and then appropriates them into his personal anecdotes about being a Vietnamese immigrant in America. Whether he's sharing his refugee experience in "Pirated!" through sexual fantasies of virile German sailors saving him from Thai pirates, turning to Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop stars as gay icons in "Forever Jimmy," or challenging stigmas and assumptions about gay Asian men being bottoms in "Forever Bottom!" -- his works are always graphic, playful, and humorously unapologetic.