Docs rock! The opening film of the press screenings was award-winning director (and Oak Park resident) Steve James’ Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. When New York City’s District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. did not have the guts to prosecute the white male investment bankers who crashed the world’s economy in 2008, he and his office instead picked on what one person in the film called “the low hanging fruit of the Chinese Immigrant Sung family,” owners of the Abacus Federal Savings Bank in New York’s Chinatown, who were accused of mortgage fraud.
Like many immigrant groups who were denied access to U.S. credit and financing, the Sungs created their own bank, given the Chinese immigrant community’s propensity to do business in cash. Abacus fulfilled a need. Apparently, in the course of that noble intention, two middle managers at Abacus got greedy and committed some criminal and corrupt financial transactions, though not the Sungs, who were exonerated. The D.A. was excoriated in the high-stakes Manhattan court case for what folks on the street called “a punk-ass move,” picking on Asians.
Kudos to James, whose previous work includes Academy Award-winning Hoop Dreams, and The Interrupters (with Oak Park’s Alex Kotlowitz). Abacus (in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese) coincides with the 50th Anniversary of Kartemquin Films, which has been supportive of immigrant families, and the Oak Park International Film Festival.
Chicago’s Michael Paulucci, whom I met at the screening via his main actor Harold Dennis, directed a sensitive 10-minute short about a black transsexual who uses spoken word to announce to the world and to her dad that she’s coming out. Dennis brilliantly plays a homophobic dad who ultimately learns why pronouns matter. Paulucci carefully crafts it. And despite the festival’s new Queer Hugo Awards category, Pronouns missed awards night. Dennis has appeared in several Oak Park International Film Festival films in the last decade. He’s especially close to local actors Joyce Porter, Renee Domenz and documentarian Bonni “Blue” McKeown.
Additionally, there was a tribute to African-American cineaste Julie Dash’s 25-year-old, recently restored soon-to-be-re-released film, Daughters of the Dust, about three generations of Gullah women preparing to head north from their St. Helena, South Carolina island in 1902. The local connection is Oak Parker Floyd Webb who served as its associate producer. Dash praised Webb’s work.
“Floyd worked on press, script changes and helped pull the film together,” she said.