CitizenShip of Mixed Emotions
Film Screening & Ticket Information
When & Where to See this Film!
OVER THE FENCE: 7 stories about getting to where you must go.
April 23, 2024 @ 9:30PM • Kaufman Astoria Studios – Zukor Theatre
View the Trailer
Synopsis
This meditative videopoem reflects on recent anti-Asian hate incidents, including one at Wing Luke museum in Seattle and one in Georgetown, Texas, in the context of violence and colonialism that goes back hundreds of years. Psychiatrist, poet and filmmaker Ravi Chandra explores love, hate, identity, and suffering, and commits us solemnly to the fight against racism and violence. The film closes with a nod to Shantideva’s “Path of the Bodhisattva”: Chandra says, “As long as racism remains, as long as beings affected by racism remain – may I too remain, to dispel the miseries of the world.”
Credits
Ravi Chandra, Director, “The Bandaged Place: From AIDS to COVID and Racial Justice.” (2021) “What’s a Winner?” (2022)
Ravi Chandra, Writer
Ravi Chandra, Producer
Ravi Chandra, Key Cast
Director Statement
This work emerged spontaneously from being “crushed” by racist incidents, which took me to a meditative, contemplative, brooding – but compassionate space. I wrote the poem in meditation on the last day of a leadership retreat for the Japanese American social justice organization Tsuru for Solidarity in mid-September, 2023, and it immediately felt like it needed to be a film.
Director Biography
Ravi Chandra, M.D. is a psychiatrist, writer, and compassion educator in San Francisco, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He writes for Psychology Today and East Wind eZine, where his longform essays are written “from his corner of the intersection of Black and Asian lives.” His debut documentary, “The Bandaged Place: From AIDS to COVID and Racial Justice” won Best Film at the 2021 Cannes Independent Film Festival. “Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks” is his full-length nonfiction debut, and is the winner of a 2017 Nautilus Silver Book Award. More information at https://linktr.ee/ravichandramd.
