She Wants to Talk to You

A film by Anita Chang

2001 | 29 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. W03795

SYNOPSIS

In October 1999 filmmaker Anita Chang befriended three 13-year-old girls – Monika Rasali, Sushma Sada and Vinita Shrestha – while living in Kathmandu, Nepal. Honestly presenting themselves in front of the camera, these girls share with the filmmaker their ideas on marriage, friendship and spirituality. Their recordings provide a complex and poignant framework for three Nepali women living in the U.S. to reflect on their own struggle, exile and quest for liberation. Through verite documentary, the film offers rare insight into the lives of girls and women from a society steeped in patriarchy, tradition and caste. SHE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU speaks closely to young girls and women, as well as provokes universal introspection about the nature of happiness and oppression, and human relations and intimacy.

PRESS

“Chang marshals voices of women in Nepal and the U.S. for a meditation on the meaning of freedom…This poignant film speaks to the tenacious complexity of women's dreams and struggles, reflected in their doubts no less than in their convictions.”

Peter X Feng Assoc. Prof., English & Women's Studies, University of Delaware

“The girls' frank opinions about marriage, friendship and spirituality provide a complex and poignant frame for the Nepali-American women's experience of exile, struggle and transformation.”

Film Arts Foundation

”…beautiful, lyrical…Highly recommended.”

Erica Fletcher Girls, Inc.

“Intimate and provocative, the film gently explores the desires and struggles of these diverse women as they contend with patriarchal societies and seek their path between two worlds.”

Irina Leimbacher SF Cinematheque

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Women in the Director’s Chair
  • New York Asian American International Film Festival
  • San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
  • National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Festival of Film & Media Arts
  • Ann Arbor Film Festival - Isabella Liddell Art Award
  • LA Asian Pacific Film & Video Film Festival
  • Boston Asian American Film Festival, Museum of Fine Arts
  • Women of Color Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive
  • Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema, San Francisco
  • Dallas Asian Film Festival
  • Kerala International Film Festival
  • South Asian Documentary Film Festival, Kathmandu, Nepal

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Anita Chang

Anita Chang is an artist, writer and educator, who works with various media forms, including film, digital video, photography, installation and the web. She has been making films for 25 years. Her films have been screened and broadcast internationally, and presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Bay Area Now, Walker Arts Center, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and National Museum of Women. Honors include grant awards from Creative Capital, Fulbright, San Francisco Arts Commission, National Geographic All Roads and the KQED Peter J. Owens Filmmaker program.

Chang’s research and creative practice examine the ways postcolonial, diasporic, and multicultural societies represent themselves in various visual media, with a focus on retelling and reviving their stories and histories, along with the impact these works have on their respective communities and nations. Chang’s moving image works reflect observations and philosophical explorations of ideas, such as inequality, spirituality and freedom. In pushing the boundaries of the moving image medium, she experiments with the interplay between content and form to inspire different kinds of audience engagements. Many of her creative works focus on the experiences of women and girls, minorities, immigrants, exiles, and disenfranchised communities. They are engaged with and complicate discourses on (post)colonialism, ethnography, diaspora, race, gender and cross-cultural representation.

Chang has taught film production and media studies in community-based and academic organizations in the Bay Area, Nepal and Taiwan, including the Department of Indigenous Languages and Communication at National Dong Hwa University. She is the author of Third Digital Documentary: A Theory and Practice of Transmedia Arts Activism, Critical Design and Ethics, and has published in American Quarterly, Verge, positions, Concentric and Taiwan Journal of Indigenous Studies. She is currently associate professor of communication at California State University, East Bay. (08/01)

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