The Asian Studies Center and the Filipino American Association of Pittsburgh invite you to join us on Saturday, August 21st at 8 pm (film begins at 8:45 pm) for a screening of Yellow Rose. The film tells the story of a Filipino teen from a small Texas town who fights to pursue her dreams as a country music performer while having to decide between staying with her family or leaving the only home she has known. The event is free and open to the public thanks to generous support of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Paraguay, 2020 | Documentary

Mateo Sobode Chiqueno's Ayoreo ancestors worshipped the sun, which they saw as a superior and generous being. But for him and his generation, the sun has primarily become a threat, turning deforested areas into dry, dusty plains—filmed here beautifully but ominously. Some Ayoreo still live in seclusion in the forests of the Chaco in Paraguay. But many more, among them Sobode Chiqueno, were herded into isolated settlements by missionaries, who took their land and forcibly converted them to Christianity.

Brazil, 2021 | Fiction

In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rain forest.

Colombia & Bolivia, 2020 | Documentary

This film deals with the "Embera Chami" society, an Amerindian community, where machismo is very present. This film denounces in a way the excision undergone by these women, which he will folow on a daily basis, and in particular Luz, hidden, masked, whose only hands, feet and hair are shown, singing of the pain of their bodies and that of having had to leave her village, following her refusal to keep quiet about her genitals removal.

Brazil, 2020 | Documentary

Join us for an evening event that celebrates world-renowned artist Yayoi Kusama. We will screen the biographical documentary Kusama: Infinity (2018) and provide educator-led tours of Kusama's permanent installation Infinity Dots Mirrored Room (1996) at the Mattress Factory.

Screen award-winning film Minari at the Tull Family Theater. A limited number of tickets are available. Register here.

A young teacher in modern Bhutan shirks his duties while planning to go to Australia to become a singer. As a reprimand, his superiors send him to the most remote school in the world, a glacial Himalayan village called Lunana, to complete his service. He wants to quit and go home, but he begins to learn of the hardship in the lives of the beautiful children he teaches, and begins to be transformed through the amazing spiritual strength of the villagers.

This panel will include a screening and discussion of Stanislav Sokolov's 3D stop motion animation Hoffmaniada (Гофманиада, 2018), one of the first full-length puppet animated film in the recent history of Soyuzmultfilm studio. The screenplay for the animation is based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novels The Golden Pot, The Sandman, and Klein Zaches. The Prussian writer of the early 19th century, E.T.A. Hoffman, is at the narrative center of this animation while balancing between the imaginary world of his own writing and his ordinary life as a lawyer.

This panel presents films by six contemporary Russian animators: Svetlana Andrianova, Nina Bisyarina, Liana Makaryan, Leonid Shmel’kov, Dina Velikovskaya, and Varia Yakovleva. They belong to different generations of animators and in their work, they use different styles and techniques.