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Divided We Fall Valarie Kaur Friday 9:30-11:30 PM

Valarie Kaur was twenty years old when she got in her car and began driving across the country. A man from her community had just been murdered. An elderly man nearly beaten to death. A woman stabbed in the head. Fragments of these stories sent across e-mail lists were not making the nightly news, only the towers falling over and over again between headshots of turbaned and bearded Osama bin Laden.As a Sikh American college student, Valarie wanted to reconcile the two faces of America—the unity of a grieving nation and the fear dividing her country. At the end of September 2001, she left behind her junior year and began a journey across the country. She was swept into a whirlwind of stories as Sikh Americans and others told her about their encounters with fear, violence, loss, and hope. From California’s Central Valley to the streets of Manhattan to Capitol Hill to the farming villages of India, Valarie’s journey spiraled into larger questions about how we see one another: Who looks like an enemy? Who looks like an American? Who counts as ‘one of us’?Divided We Fall is a moving story that brings us to the in-tersections of violence, identity, and power in America, and forces us to confront where we stand as a people. In a world divided into us and them, the question ‘who counts as one of us’ is vital for our American identity - and any generation struggling to understand itself in a post-9/11 world. Divided We Fall provides the witness of the film-maker and the testimonies of many Americans who en-dure as victims and survivors in their own country. These stories may help us envision an America that not only tolerates but embraces difference as essen-tial to what it means to be American.

Americanese Eric Byler Thursday 9-11 pm

From Independent Spirit Award-nominated director Eric Byler and the Producer of the award-winning PICTURE BRIDE and THE DEBUT, Lisa Onodera, comes an Asian American love story based on the seminal novel by Shawn Wong.This complex love story has drawn a talented and radiant cast, including Academy-Award® winning filmmaker Chris Tashima (Lani Loa: The Passage; Visas and Virtue), Allison Sie (Red), Joan Chen (The Last Emperor; ‘Twin Peaks’), Kelly Hu (X-Men II: X-Men United; Scorpion King), Ben Shenkman (Must Love Dogs; ‘Angels in America’), veteran Sab Shimono (Gung Ho; Come See the Paradise) and Michael Paul Chan (Joy Luck Club; Thousand Pieces of Gold). Shawn Wong’s novel American Knees, first published in 1996, shocked and excited readers with its ground-breaking depiction of an unapologetically sexy Asian American man and three complex women. Author Gish Jen exclaimed, ‘Finally we have racial issues made racy!’Director Byler, whose first feature CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES was lauded by Roger Ebert as ‘a relationship picture that plays like an emotional thriller,’ has crafted a sensual and poignant screen adaptation. Byler brings forth in a dramatic and evolving fashion, all of the emotions that ordinary lovers experience in their everyday romances. This ‘everyman’ love story uses the Asian American community as the backdrop, portraying the parallel lives of two ex-lovers with all of the intricacies of their diverse ethnic backgrounds and heritages. Byler delicately exposes their complex emotional struggles with an extraordinary view into their ordinary lives.