Description

* Screening Dates: November 12 – 19, 2020  

* Register above for FREE screening  

* Related Event: A.K.A Don Bonus Masterclass – November 17, 6:30 – 8:30 PM (Scroll down for details; by registering for the screening, you are also getting access to the masterclass and vice versa)    

USA | 1995 | 65 min | English | Archive Presentation | Documentary   

Cambodian-born Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny takes a Hi8 camcorder into his final year of high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, documenting intersecting events happening at school, at home, and amongst friends and family. Filmed and released in 1995, the film can be seen as a forerunner of the now-popular diary or vlog documentary format, featuring raw footage and voiceover from Don Bonus.  Although made in the 1990s, the beats of the film are familiar and still relevant, moving through issues of low-income housing, gang violence, academic struggle, and family fractures, while also featuring communal celebration, youthful camaraderie and intimate family life. These scenes are simultaneously casual and intentional, recontextualized and given resonance through Don Bonus’ frank, teenage monologic reflections.  A.K.A Don Bonus highlights how the stories that came before us, although constructed from their time and space, can continue to speak powerfully into our present.  – Jasmine Gui

CAST: Sokly Ny  

Recognitions OFFICIAL SELECTION Berlin International Film Festival, 1996 San Francisco Film Festival, 1995   AWARDS National Emmy Award, 1996 Golden Gate Award, San Francisco Film Festival, 1995  

DIRECTOR BIO

Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker and is the founder of the groundbreaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Nakasako is a member of the Writers Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

RELATED EVENT: A.K.A. Don Bonus Masterclass

DATE: November 17, 6:30 – 8:30 PM   

Deep dive into this critical archival film with director Spencer Nakasako, Reel Asian, and the Asian Institute! This masterclass will explore the narrative construction of A.K.A Don Bonus, methods of production, the vlog-style documentary format, and contextualize the film in its era but also situate it in ongoing contemporary conversations.  

SPEAKERS:

Spencer Nakasako • Director

Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker. He won a National Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a Cambodian refugee teenager that aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary about a Iu Mien refugee teenage couple growing up too fast in Oakland, California, also aired on P.O.V. His third film in his trilogy about Southeast Asian youth, Refugee, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and garnered major awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival and Hamptons Film Festival. Nakasako is the founder of the ground-breaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District where he collaborated with youth from the neighborhood on filmmaking for 17 years.  

Miko Revereza • Filmmaker  

Miko Revereza is a filmmaker raised in California and currently residing between several countries. His upbringing as an undocumented immigrant in the United States informs his relationship with moving images. DROGA! (2014), DISINTEGRATION 93-96 (2017), No data plan (2018) and Distancing (2019) have widely screened at festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NYFF Projections and Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Aside from these films, Revereza produces expanded cinema, direct animation, performance, criticism and publishing including works such as Biometrics (2018), Live Cinema (2019-2020) and Towards a Stateless Cinema (2019). Revereza is listed as Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema, a 2019 Flaherty Seminar featured filmmaker and MFA graduate at Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He is a 2021 recipient of the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking.  

MODERATOR: Aram Siu Wai Collier • Head of Programming, Reel Asian  

Aram Siu Wai Collier is a filmmaker, educator, and film festival programmer. He has a background in documentary, editing the award-winning feature documentary Refugee and directing/editing the short doc Who I Became. His subsequent dramatic and experimental film work has played festivals in the United States, Canada, Japan, and China. From 2011-2014, his omnibus live music and film project Suite Suite Chinatown toured Canada, Asia, and the United States. In 2017, he wrote, directed, edited, and produced the feature film Stand Up Man, which had its World premiere at the Atlantic Film Festival and its International Premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Most recently Aram directed and edited the award-winning short documentary A Sweet & Sour Christmas for CBC. He is currently the Head of Programming at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and teaches Media Production at Humber College.  

Registration for Masterclass: https://www.reelasian.com/festival-events/aka-donbonus-masterclass/ ***Ticket Registration for the A.K.A Don Bonus Masterclass includes access to the A.K.A Don Bonus film.