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A spunky, mini-skirted daughter of Ho Chi Minh’s revolution leaves cosmopolitan Hanoi on a high school exchange program. Anticipating Hollywood, Mai crash lands in rural Mississippi…where her relationships with white Pentecostal and black Baptist host families, self-proclaimed rednecks, transvestites, and South Vietnamese immigrants challenge her long-held ideas about herself, about freedom, about America, and even about Vietnam.
Curated and presented by filmmaker Nellie Kluz as part of DELLS NATION: A trio of movies – Slacker (1990), Seventeen (1983) and Mai's America (2002) – about young people cruising around, comparing notes, and making their own scenes in small-city America.
In the contained bubble-worlds of these films, adolescent energy powers philosophical theorizing, devastating culture clashes, and epic social collisions. Across decades and regions, characters grapple with the collective coming-of-age question: "what do people do around here?"
Dir. Marlo Poras, USA, 2002, 72 min.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Marlo Poras, moderated by series curator Nellie Kluz.
All sales are final and tickets are nonrefundable.
A spunky, mini-skirted daughter of Ho Chi Minh’s revolution leaves cosmopolitan Hanoi on a high school exchange program. Anticipating Hollywood, Mai crash lands in rural Mississippi…where her relationships with white Pentecostal and black Baptist host families, self-proclaimed rednecks, transvestites, and South Vietnamese immigrants challenge her long-held ideas about herself, about freedom, about America, and even about Vietnam.
Curated and presented by filmmaker Nellie Kluz as part of DELLS NATION: A trio of movies – Slacker (1990), Seventeen (1983) and Mai's America (2002) – about young people cruising around, comparing notes, and making their own scenes in small-city America.
In the contained bubble-worlds of these films, adolescent energy powers philosophical theorizing, devastating culture clashes, and epic social collisions. Across decades and regions, characters grapple with the collective coming-of-age question: "what do people do around here?"
Dir. Marlo Poras, USA, 2002, 72 min.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Marlo Poras, moderated by series curator Nellie Kluz.
All sales are final and tickets are nonrefundable.