Half-Life

Director: Jennifer Phang
Cast: Sanoe Lake, Julia Nickson, Leonardo Nam, Alexander Agate, Ben Redgrave, Lee Marks, James Eckhouse, Susan Ruttan, Deb Fink, Mary Angello
Runtime: 110 minutes
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screening in: Emerging Visions

Screening Times

9:00 PM, Friday March 7th - Alamo Lamar 1
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6:30 PM, Tuesday March 11th - Alamo Lamar 1
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6:30 PM, Wednesday March 12th - Alamo Lamar 1
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everything subject to change

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Synopsis:
half-life (n.) The time required for one unstable element to decay and transform into another.In Diablo Valley, California, a complacent community struggles to adapt to a changing world where looming global chaos threatens to alter life as they know it.Nineteen-year-old Pam Wu remembers her father with longing, since he flew from their lives forever. She and nine-year-old Timothy remain with their mother, Saura, who buries the shame of her husband`s desertion by losing herself in the lustful attentions of her younger boyfriend Wendell. Still, Saura can`t conceal a bitter nostalgia for her youth, when she had love and purpose to motivate her.Pam`s only friend Scott Parker, a restless Korean adoptee, battles to jar his fundamentalist parents out of their denial of his sexuality, inadvertently entangling his closeted boyfriend Jonah with inescapable repercussions.Wendell`s powerful presence threatens to tear apart the Wu family, even as Scott`s machinations backfire, jeopardizing things for himself, his parents, and Jonah. As cataclysm looms, lines are crossed, secrets long repressed begin to emerge, and all are left to face their own selfishness and intolerance... until Timothy discovers a way to alter everyone`s reality.

Director's Bio:
Jennifer Phang is a Berkeley-born daughter of Chinese-Malaysian and Vietnamese heritage, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Directing program at the American Film Institute, Jennifer Phang received AFI`s Holleigh Bernson Memorial Award and the Dreamworks World Studio Foundation Scholarship. Jennifer`s thesis film "Love Ltd.", a suburban dramedy, was screened at over thirty international film festivals and is co-distributed by Hypnotic, NAATA, and Frameline.