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Two Lies (1990)
(25min) 16mm, b/w, sound
Directors: Pamela Tom
Grant Awarded to Pamela Tom
Archive: UCLA Film & Television Archive

Doris Chu, a recently divorced Chinese American woman, has plastic surgery to make her eyes appear rounder.

From her teenage daughter Mei’s perspective, her mother’s “two eyes” equal “two lies.” When the family journeys to a desert resort during Doris’s recuperation, a series of revelations and bitter confrontations erupt.

Combining elements of a road movie, film noir, and family drama, the film was described as having the “resonances of American independent filmmaking…offering alternative ways to approach questions of racial, sexual, and cultural difference.”

Set against the backdrop of a stark desert landscape, this powerful black and white drama explores issues of race, beauty, cultural betrayal and appropriation, and inter-generational conflict.

Praised for its powerful black