On March 16, 2021, a gunman opened fire in an Asian-owned business in metro Atlanta, killing four people. He then drove about thirty miles south targeting another Asian business, where he killed three more people. And then, he crossed the street to a third Asian business and killed another person. In the span of an hour, eight people were fatally shot, six of whom were Asian women.

Emasculated and neutered or evil and calculating? Domineering dragon lady or helpless concubine? In twentieth-century Hollywood, the choices for Asian-American actors were few and far between. Often, the roles available were reductive and one-dimensional—stereotypes come to life.

Produced for the Motion Design course taught by Raquel Salvatella de Prada, assistant professor of the practice of art, art history & visual studies, and arts of the moving image.

Produced for the Motion Design course taught by Raquel Salvatella de Prada, assistant professor of the practice of art, art history & visual studies, and arts of the moving image.

Warm… Safe… Home. To be ripped away from it and endure a near-death illness at only nine months old, and still be alive to make it back home in the end — was a miracle.

Produced for The Short Audio Documentary course taught by John Biewen at the Center for Documentary Studies.

Music can bring us back not only to where we once lived, but to places in which we’ve thrived, felt comfortable, and had a niche. Laura journeys to several homes using audio and imagination.

The cashier at the Dollar General gave me a somewhat confused glance as I checked out, looking at me with a combination of perplexity and shyness. He did not quite understand what my purchase would be used for, but he also seemed too shy to ask. And so, without explanation, I paid for my item and left.

“Nine years,” the Poet begins intensely, in media res. “Fighting on and off, fighting to the wall and back. Greeks win one day, Trojans win the next, like a game of tug-of-war.” He pulls at a black rope hung ominously from a scaffold. “And nothing to show for it but exhaustion, poverty, and loneliness,” he says, articulating each word with a maniacal kick to the air.

On stage, a woman taps at synthesizers and drum boxes, creating alien noises with her fingertips. Across the room, behind the soundboard, senior Jack Tarpey listens with earphones askew. He tweaks dials that correspond to synths, drums, and vocals, transforming a tangled racket into a starry, liquid melody.

Robert Milazzo is a patient, persistent man. Back in the late ’90s, as he was figuring out how to break into the film business, he made it his mission to somehow connect with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright/screenwriter/director David Mamet.

David Mayer never knew much about his grandfather, Paul. He knew his grandfather had escaped a Nazi labor camp in eastern Germany during World War II and emigrated to the U.S. in 1949. But Paul Mayer died in 1985, before David was born. The reality of that experience remained distant for David—until he found a translation of his grandfather’s journal.

Family Weekend stars Matthew Modine and Kristin Chenowith as workaholic parents whose sixteen year-old daughter (Olesya Rulin) holds them hostage in order to gain their attention and bring the family back together. The quirky comedy, which opens in February, is in the tradition of such offbeat auteurs as Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom, Rushmore), but in fact it’s the first feature-length film by a group of Duke friends.

FILM

Garbage Can-Can

When choreographer Allison Orr approached a group of Austin, Texas, trash collectors about creating a dance performance, she was met with silence and skepticism. A year later, on an abandoned airport runway, two dozen workers and a fleet of trucks—accompanied by a live music combo—presented a spectacle of sound and movement for an audience of more than 2,000 people.