Description

This experimental film essay explores the poetics of identity through an oblique portrait of gay Japanese American actor, Sab Shimono. For more than five decades, Shimono has performed on stage and screen in more than 150 roles as warlords, bus boys, and businessmen. Shimono asks, “How is it that we know who we are?” Recalling early structuralist works by Hollis Frampton and Martha Rosler, SEMIOTICS OF SAB displays the grammatology of queer Asian American masculinity through conflicting lexicons of race, representation, and selfhood.

Director's Bio

Tina Takemoto is an artist and filmmaker whose work has screened at Frameline, Outfest, Ann Arbor Film Festival, MIX NYC, CAAMfest, Fusion, MIX Milano, Hamburg Queer Film Festival, and Rio Gay Film Festival. Her filmography includes Warning Shot, Sex, Politics & Sticky Rice, Looking for Jiro, and Memoirs of Bjork-Geisha. Looking for Jiro received Best Experimental Jury Award at the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival.

Credits

Producer: Tina Takemoto
Director: Tina Takemoto
Writer: Tina Takemoto
Sound Design: Kadet Kuhne

Plays in

1. 

   Cine-Diorama

   Shorts Programs / 100 mins

   Recall those grade school projects where we had to construct stories in a shoebox? These directors ignite our affective memory with miniature scenery, childhood innocence and vapor tea pots. — Kristen Lee

   In This Program: Sampaguita Love, Under the Same Sky, Single Mother Only Daughter, Semiotics of Sab, Please Come Again, The Last Tip, Forever, Chinatown

   ---

2. 

   Pink House, Pink Home

   Shorts Programs / 84 mins

   In private living rooms, within community art spaces, on city streets, and across moviescapes, trans and queer folk dare to dream of home. — Erica R. Cho

   In This Program: Semiotics of Sab, Sounds Like the Sound of Music, Escaping Agra, The Streets Are Ours: Two Lives Cross in Karachi, I’m Fine, Separar

   ---

Website Copyright © 2017 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival & Gala Festival Engine