“Ignorance is what keeps us fearful, and storytelling is a powerful tool to keep fear at bay.”
FEB 23, 2024
Big Sky Doc Fest: 'Troll Storm' revisits Whitefish harassment victim
In 2016, a Whitefish resident became the face of a national news story. Tanya Gersh led a normal life as a mother, wife and woman with a successful career in real estate. But her life changed forever when she and her family became the subject of antisemitic attacks instigated by an influential neo-Nazi.
Gersh spent about six months being attacked, threatened and harassed every day over the phone and online, which is a type of attack called a “troll storm.” It started because of a miscommunication that Gersh had with the mother of a prominent right-wing politician and led to neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer website inciting the attacks. This led the Southern Poverty Law Center to reach out to her and to work with her to file and eventually win a lawsuit.
While the attacks have not entirely abated, Gersh has become a powerful voice against hate and helped unite the Whitefish community to oppose and reject hateful ideologies in the small Montana town.
A new movie, “Troll Storm,” premiering this Saturday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, dives deep into this harrowing story and puts the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. into historical context
FEB 2, 2024
EUNICE LAU’S ‘A-TOWN BOYZ’ EXPLORES FRACTURED RELATIONSHIPS
Eunice Lau is, in her words, “searching to connect.” The filmmaker seeks stories across communities that convey universal truths about immigrant experience, intergenerational relationships, and what the stories of others can teach us about ourselves.
This search took her on a years-long journey to tell the story of A-Town Boyz, streaming now on Amazon and Tubi. Following the stories of aspiring rappers Vickz (Harrison Kim) and Bizzy (Jamy Long), and gang leader Eugene Chung, Lau’s documentary explores the challenges that Asian American men face in fighting for their dignity and navigating generational trauma, and gives the space for each man’s story to unfold on its own terms.
MARCH 19, 2024
They Were Made to Choose Sides: On Eunice Lau’s “A-Town Boyz”
IN 2015, I saw a trailer for Eunice Lau’s A-Town Boyz, a documentary chronicling the experiences of Asian American men in Atlanta gangs. The trailer stunned me with a depiction of Asians in the States that I’d hardly seen before on screen: wearing fitted hats, covered in tattoos, rapping, getting into fights. A father of one gang member says, in Korean, “My life is in a shamble.” The year 2015 wasn’t even a decade ago, but it feels like a different time. Barack Obama was still president, and it seemed like few people, if any, were taking Donald Trump seriously. There was still much ado about the meaning of a “postrace” era. It was the year Fresh Off the Boat first aired on ABC, praised for being the first Asian American show on network TV since 1994’s All-American Girl, which starred Margaret Cho. This was before Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and Parasite (2019), and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and Past Lives (2023).
Watching the trailer, I felt two distinct shocks. First, that of recognition: Anyone who’s lived among the Asian American working poor knows that we don’t all grow up to be doctors and lawyers. Then, one of surprise: That there were enough people out there who thought it important to document these lives and bring them to the screen. If those people were anything like me, they, too, were desperate to see reflected the pathologies they had thought unique to their families, shaped as they were by the mediating circumstances of class, race, and immigration.
I waited patiently for the film to come out, thinking it might show my family something about itself.
I ended up waiting over eight years.
AUG 6, 2020
Eunice Lau Accepts the Call to Tell Powerful Stories
Lau’s visionary, compelling body of work tends to center on social justice, including Through the Fire, which was nominated for Best Short Documentary at AMPAS Student Academy in 2013. Accept the Call, which aired on Independent Lens earlier this year, was supported by ITVS Open Call and the Diversity Development Fund.
JAN 17, 2020
"Human History is Created by People with the Courage to Do The Right Thing": Eunice Lau on Accept the Call
Filmmaker took the opportunity to discuss the thought-provoking doc with Lau prior to her film’s January 20th airdate on PBS’s Independent Lens.
June 14, 2019
A VIVID TALE OF FATHER AND SON
"...Their story is a microcosm of how America’s “war on terror” has impacted American Muslims. Not only has it empowered the legal system to over-criminalize those found guilty of supporting terrorist organizations, but it also has fueled the clarion call of the extremists who are luring young minds to their ideology."
