Dec 2, 2018

Vu Pham

Vu Pham is a Portland based writer, director, producer, and actor. He is a refugee from Vietnam whose work has been significantly influenced by personal and historical trauma, existential philosophy, and transitory life on the fringes. He has won grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, been showcased by the NW Film Center and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and was recently nominated for the Sundance Institute’s Asian American Feature Film Fellowship. His work and his story have been featured by OPB, The Oregonian, the Willamette Week, and DiaCritics. His films have played in such festivals as the Portland International Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, and Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. As an actor he has had the honor of working with actors Harrison Ford, Brendan Frasier, Jonathan Groff, and Cori Stoll. Vu considers the followings acts to be an accurate summation of his existence: sleeping, dreaming, building towards his ideals, destroying that which was built, and rebuilding.

The program for the evening will include:

Love is Strong (87 Minutes)
Love is Strong is a cinematic triptych that probes the apogees of passion through characters that are tormented by the irreconcilable forms of “love.” Where the Flowers Fell looks at the psychic disintegration of a detached actress following the death of her mother. Sudden Stars in the Night Zoo delves into the existential crisis of a working-class man as he is brought tumbling back into reality by his tormented wife. The True Color of Hunger follows the clashing values of two individuals united by social radicalism and torn apart by a mystifying betrayal.

Mood Reel for The Horizon is a Scar, My Love (8 Minutes)
The Horizon is a Scar, My Love is a feature length narrative film that follows the journey of a pair of outcast lovers who live out of their vehicle. Set adrift by disintegrating dreams and thrown into Godless freedom, they travel across the U.S., occasionally engaging in opportunistic petty crimes. At the end of a temporary catering job at a home in the Portland suburbs, they decide to burglarize it. The house belongs to the widow of a recently deceased spiritual leader who catches them in the act. What begins as an unwieldy standoff between the woman and the couple results in an unexpected invitation from her to take temporary residence in her home. The couple acquiesce and their days together sink into the wilderness of the id where mysterious visions and moral tests ferment and breach an impending reality that is locked in the legacy of the deceased husband.