Report back: The Oak Park Story world premiere March 22, 2010

Will work for tickets, Pahole & Rj, SFIAAFF

Hey! We just had our world premiere of The Oak Park Story last Sunday & it was awesome. Due to my co-director Russell Jeung diligent efforts as well as his huge network of friends, the house was full last Sunday for our first show and nearly full the next night for our second one. Since I hadn’t seen the movie on a screen bigger than my desktop and I hadn’t yet watched it in all of its color-corrected and sound-mixed glory I was a little bit nervous and excited when the lights went down on Sunday. But as soon as the movie started & the title sequence started to roll I relaxed and enjoyed the experience of seeing our movie on the big screen for the first time.
After the show ended we were able to thank our many supporters who were attendance, including Frances Phillips from the Creative Work Fund, who gave us our seed grant back in 2005, several of the people who appeared in the movie, our composer and music supervisor Camilo Landau, and Lorraine Dong, chair of our department, Asian American Studies, at San Francisco State.

Good times, The Oak Park Story premiere reception, Mar. 14, 2010. photo: Kathy Ma

We then repaired to the reception, catered by some of the Oak Park ladies, with indescribably delicious treats including tamales with green sauce, potato and cheese flautas, spring rolls, and beef skewers. Since I had been a tad too keyed up to eat properly before the show I scarfed down quite a few of these goodies, although there was plenty for everyone with some to take home for later (which I did).

We also debuted our brand new Oak Park tshirts and hoodies, designed by the intrepid Nina Chan. These were hot sellers and we’ve already sold more than half of our stock, especially the excellent hoodies, which are the bee’s knees, imho.

We’re on a whirlwind tour with the movie for the next few weeks, so keep an eye out here and on our website for updated details on the dates and locations of our next screenings. We’ll be at several colleges in Southern California as well as at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival on May 3, and we’ll have hoodies and tshirts for sale, as well as DVDs of the movie. We’d be happy to visit your campus or film festival as well so if you want us to stop by, just ask.

After more than four years of work on this flick it’s great to finally finish up and start showing it around—hope to be coming to your local film festival, college or community group soon!

Oak Park Story: Reviews March 18, 2010

The San Francisco Bay Guardian writes, “The Oak Park Story is a nice piece of local interest, a document of the struggle by an Oakland apartment community to improve their living conditions. As a piece of film, Valerie Soe’s short film is a little rough around the edges, but it feels like such a deeply personal undertaking that it’s easy to get caught up in the lives of its deeply-bonded residents. At a scant 22 minutes, The Oak Park Story is the perfect length, and the gamut of emotions the filmmakers are able elicit in such a short amount of time is impressive.”

Ravi Chandra writes on the AAIFF blog: “Short documentaries that are in themselves worth the price of admission– Valerie Soe’s OAK PARK STORY tells us of the struggle of Cambodian and Latino tenants against their difficult landlord. It harks back to Curtis Choy’s FALL OF THE I-HOTEL but with a more positive outcome. I was absolutely charmed by this short film; taken with their respective main features, they will leave you with a treasure of sweet memories yourself.”

CAAM On The Clock: The Oak Park Story February 26, 2010

Here’s a fun little interview I did last week for the Center For Asian American Media‘s youtube show, On The Clock. CAAM is the sponsor of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, where our movie is premiering on Mar. 14 (tickets on sale now!).  As a filmmaker I’m always a bit apprehensive about being on camera myself but the interview isn’t too cringeful and the folks at CAAM did a great job of putting it together.

Anyways, have a look–it’s a quick five minutes. The other content on CAAM’s channel is fun, too, and I’m sure they’ll have more groovy stuff as the festival draws near.

The Oak Park Story: hyphenmagazine.com February 17, 2010

Bowling, Oak Park courtyard, The Oak Park Story, 2010

Here’s a nice little blurb about The Oak Park Story from Hypen magazine’s online publication. The world premiere will be on Sunday, Mar. 14 at 2p at the Sundance Kabuki Cinema in San Francisco, as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Tickets are now available so get ‘em while they’re hot. The Oak Park Story precedes Curtis Choy’s new documentary about Pinoy poet Al Robles, Manilatown Is In The Heart. See you there!