In a scintillating and titillating panel discussion interwoven with film clips, Gregg Araki, Roddy Bogawa, Marcus Hu, and Jon Moritsugu—the “bad boys” of Asian American cinema— will explore their ambivalent relationships to identity politics, changing attitudes toward technology, indie cinema, and more. Then we’ll celebrate the underground music that served as inspiration for the filmmakers at a raucous after-party featuring a live performance by twisted glam rock/garage/punk band Low on High (Jon Moritsugu and Amy Davis) and indie-dark wave sounds of SISU, featuring Sandy Vu, formerly of the Dum Dum Girls.

Ray Stark Family Theatre (SCA), School of Cinematic Arts 108

900 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089

7 p.m.: Panel Discussion, The Ray Stark Family Theatre, School of Cinematic Arts 108, USC

9 p.m.: After Party and Concert, Tommy’s Place, Ronald Tutor Campus Center, USC

ADMISSION:

Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP beginning Friday, February 24, at 9 a.m.

Panel Discussion:

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP

USC Alumni: RSVP

General Public: RSVP

After Party and Concert:

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP

USC Alumni: RSVP

General Public: RSVP

DESCRIPTION:

“I want to make movies where you feel like you’re going to a show, where you leave all sweaty and freaked out and talking about it. It should be like seeing a band instead of sitting there, checking it out, falling asleep.”

—Jon Moritsugu

Gregg, Roddy, Jon, and Marcus have exploded notions of identity and identification through a radicalized indie-film aesthetic inspired as much by the anything-goes energy of the underground music scene as by the formalist experimentations of directors like Godard. Join us for a panel discussion and concert exploring how indie cinema has been transformed by their punk-influenced, sexually and artistically transgressive, DIY filmmaking.

In a fascinating conversation interwoven with film clips, the filmmakers will explore identity politics, changing attitudes toward technology, indie cinema, and more. Then we’ll celebrate the underground music that served as inspiration for the filmmakers at a raucous after-party featuring a live performance by twisted glam rock/garage/punk band Low on High (Jon Moritsugu and Amy Davis) and indie-dark wave sounds of SISU, featuring Sandy Vu, formerly of the Dum Dum Girls.

Participant Bios:

Gregg Araki erupted from the underground in 1992 with The Living End, a film about two HIV-positive gay lovers. His “Teen Apocalypse” trilogy includes Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation, and Nowhere, which he describes as “an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 on acid.” He is also the director of the critically lauded Mysterious Skin, Smiley Face, and Kaboom.

New York filmmaker Roddy Bogawa’s work is known for its investigation of history and culture via lyrical, lo-fi means and innovative narrative structures. He has made three feature films, I Was Born, But . . . (2004), Junk(1999), and Some Divine Wind (1991) and numerous shorts.

Marcus Hu is the co-founder and co-president of Strand Releasing, which was honored with a retrospective at MoMA and has distributed the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Gregg Araki, François Ozon, Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Fatih Akin, Aki Kaurismäki, Claude Miller, Manoel de Oliveira, Gaspar Noé, André Téchiné, and Terence Davies.

Writer/director Jon Moritsugu has been making films since 1985. His features Mod Fuck Explosion, My Degeneration, Fame Whore, Scumrock, Hippy Porn, and Pig Death Machine have scorched eyeballs worldwide, from Sundance to MoMA to Cannes to the Guggenheim to Berlin. He and his wife and collaborator, Amy Davis, won the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. (IMDB)

Additional Links:

Amy Davis IMDB

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Akira Lippit (Cinematic Arts, Comparative Literature, and East Asian Languages and Cultures), Viet Nguyen (English and American Studies and Ethnicity), Sunyoung Lee (Kaya Press), and Jonathan Wang (Asian Pacific American Student Services). Co-sponsored by Asian Pacific American Student Services and Outside the Box Office.