This film marks the directorial debut of Robert Benayoun. An artist (Richard Leduc) attending a party smokes some dope and develops the ability to see into the future and the past. He returns to his apartment where he sees the vision of a woman who had lived there 30 years ago. A friend tries to convince him it is his heightened sensitively as an artist that allows for the newfound abilities, but he soon has psychedelic hallucinations and his abilities increase with time. Stop-motion photography is effectively used in his sequence of visual experiences where the people exist but not the city in this metaphysical story.
In this powerful documentary, Mama Yang, an 84-year-old woman living in New York, finds herself in correspondence with 45 high security prison inmates she views as her own children. Most are Chinese American immigrants, and see in Mama Yang a mother figure they never knew before they stepped through prison walls.
For Mama Yang though, the story is about more than Christian charity. She had already lived a full life in Taiwan when her husband died at age sixty and her son lost their house in a financial blunder. She moved to the US to start anew and lives with a Taiwanese American granddaughter that remains distant. In a film marked by family separations, Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own granddaughter – to heal lifetimes of wounds.