Feature

Running time: N/A

Winner, Audience Award - Cinequest Film Festival
Winner, Outstanding First Film - LA Asian Pacific Film Festival
Closing Night Film - Vietnamese International Film Festival

Mr. Do (Chi Pham) has raised his kids to be good Catholics and to live up to his unrealistic expectations. His son Ty (David Huynh) is abandoning pre-med to chase a less practical dream, while Linh (Yvonne Truong) is keeping her fiancé?s Buddhist background a secret. However, they aren?t the only kids with secrets in the Do family. It?s time Dad faces the truth that his kids have grown up.

Running time: N/A

Each year, the San Jose Film Commission honors Bay Area film and video artists with a spectacular awards ceremony. Cinequest is honored to treat our audience to a sampling of the 1997 Joey Award Winners.

Running time: N/A

Partners for Life is a gritty, harsh tragic story of best friends Brad and Tommy, two small-time criminals/drug dealers living in a false reality that was created primarily by the sensationalistic media they grew up with.

Brad and Tommy find that although its easy to get caught up in this fast-paced underground lifestyle, it is difficult to prosper in it. Having to pay back a local drug lord, they seek new ways to make some fast cash.

Partners for Life is a story about influences, decisions and destiny with subtle messages about today's youth.

Running time: N/A

Cinequest is excited to have Jenni Olson back for the second year running. Last year's Trailer Camp was a great After Hours crowd pleaser, and we're expecting no less from this year's offering.

Running time: N/A

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility - unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it - that goes by the cult name of "Camp."

Susan Sontag, Notes on "Camp":

Yeah, what is Camp exactly? You tell yourself you know it when
you see it. Like Ru Paul and Tammy Faye
Whatever-her-name-is-now. Or is one Camp and the other just
vulgar? It can get so confusing: even dangerous. One misstep -

Running time: N/A

"Can a 'chosen family' ever substitute for broken blood ties?" That's the question director Pam Walton asks in her film Family Values, as Cinequest presents one of this year's winners of the Santa Clara Arts Council Awards, a film about the failure of biological family, it's attraction and its failures.

Running time: N/A

We are also very proud to present the U.S. Premiere of Phil Leirness' Til Death Do Us Part, the story of a man's attempt to re-kindle an old flame's love for him using the help of her ex-husband and parents. It's not as easy as that, however, as her ex-husband still love's her as well. What follows is a humorous love triangle involving three people trying to find not only a life-long commitment, but a way to find what life has to offer in return.

Running time: N/A

Sex, death, dysfunction, abuse, posterity, oblivion, love and coffee are the topics as Cinequest presents the World Premiere of Gary Ellenberg's Grinders, the extremely odd tale of an artist's desire to die and be appreciated for his work, his sister's need to find herself, and a couple's dwindling relationship in the light of discovery.

Running time: N/A

(Latino Celebration) Luis Valdez Retrospective

Running time: N/A

Can you think of a better way to cap a celebration of Maverick Cinema than to to discover a lost classic from the Godfather of Independent Filmmakers, Orson Welles? A dedicated team has recently rekindled the dream of Welles' beloved Don Quixote and has restored the lost masterpiece. San Jose will have the rare opportunity to hold the West Coast Premiere of this treasure as our Closing Night event. We are extremely pleased that Oja Kodar, (Welles' widow), Juan Amalbert and Peter Bogdanovich will be in attendance to introduce the file and join us for the post screening festivities.