Nguyễn Tân Hoàng

The video explores gay Asian men’s (GAMs) cruising strategies on American gay sex hookup websites. In environments deemed open and accessible, affording new sexual freedoms, GAMs often encounter such pronouncements as “No fats, no femmes, no Asians,” that is, caveats that severely constrain their cyber-cruising opportunities. I draw on two sets of GAMs’ cruising strategies in the face of such rejection: the headless torso pics as a way of “tactical masking” their GAM-ness and the use of screen names that proudly assert their Asianness (“GAM” and “AZN”) and those that exploit shameful racial slurs (“chink” and “gook”). The video combs online sex cruising grounds for articulations of gay Asian men’s desires and demands.

Catholicism, homosexuality and “cinematic men of the cloth.”

A video collage/memoir about two buddies who drift apart, a bit, when one changes gender.

First person short bemoaning one of the more tiresome stereotypes about gay asian males.

A riotous, erotic kaleidoscope in which a Vietnamese refugee’s recollections of fleeing his country by boat become enmeshed with nostalgia and big-screen fantasies of shirtless pirates and sailors—including images of Brad Davis in Fassbinder’s Querelle. (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

Explores the “no Asians” ban through "gaysian nude archives."

The video explores gay Asian men’s (GAMs) cruising strategies on American gay sex hookup websites. In environments deemed open and accessible, affording new sexual freedoms, GAMs often encounter such pronouncements as “No fats, no femmes, no Asians,” that is, caveats that severely constrain their cyber-cruising opportunities. I draw on two sets of GAMs’ cruising strategies in the face of such rejection: the headless torso pics as a way of “tactical masking” their GAM-ness and the use of screen names that proudly assert their Asianness (“GAM” and “AZN”) and those that exploit shameful racial slurs (“chink” and “gook”). The video combs online sex cruising grounds for articulations of gay Asian men’s desires and demands.

Catholicism, homosexuality and “cinematic men of the cloth.”

A video collage/memoir about two buddies who drift apart, a bit, when one changes gender.

First person short bemoaning one of the more tiresome stereotypes about gay asian males.

A riotous, erotic kaleidoscope in which a Vietnamese refugee’s recollections of fleeing his country by boat become enmeshed with nostalgia and big-screen fantasies of shirtless pirates and sailors—including images of Brad Davis in Fassbinder’s Querelle. (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

A riotous, erotic kaleidoscope in which a Vietnamese refugee’s recollections of fleeing his country by boat become enmeshed with nostalgia and big-screen fantasies of shirtless pirates and sailors—including images of Brad Davis in Fassbinder’s Querelle. (UCLA Film & Television Archive)

Explores the “no Asians” ban through "gaysian nude archives."

This short bittersweet video presents a series of daydreams (and nightmares) around the elusive and ubiquitous figure of Supermodel Linda Evangelista, lurking in the mind of an Asian American teenager on the verge of queerdom. Obsessional projections figure in scenarios like receiving obscene phone calls from Linda and impersonating Ms. E. on a Japanese talk show, interspersed between rehearsals of a coming out. The quintessential Supermodel, famous for changing her image radically from season to season, the Linda Phenomenon personifies the ideals of femininity in this culture and evokes the queer practice of passing from day to day. Backed by a soundtrack of French love songs sung by Vietnamese superstar-singer Thanh Lan, the tape poses questions about queer childhood narratives, cross-gender and cross-racial identification.

Using Julie Andrews and origami patterns, this film plays with notions of power and pleasure in an interracial, sexual relationship.

Forever Jimmy! is an "over-reaction" to the lack of sexy Asian men in mainstream U.S. media. It attempts to insert gay Asian male desire into popular culture.

Explores the phenomenon of "sticky rice" (slang for Asian men who are attracted to other Asian men) through head interviews, rice washing, cooking and eating with ten young Asian men in San Francisco.

Video essay that returns to the 1973 first hardcore feature-length gay porn film, to find in its soundtrack the shadow presence of its maker, the beguiling Japanese American video artist and activist Norman Yonemoto. A look at how sound is used to inject racial consciousness in early gay pornography.

Juxtaposes Hollywood’s Filipino sissy houseboy with bare back porn, highlighting persistent “uninhibited” racial-sexual stereotypes.

He was nineteen, and it was his first: kiss, holding hands, staying over. The summer ended quickly. I missed him terribly and made these two tapes for him. Through the use of popular love songs, the first letter expresses the euphoria of a new romance, while bitterness, disenchantment and desperation reflect the failed connection of the second letter.

I Remember Dancing brings together an intergenerational cast of "trans and queer gaysians" ruminating on the past and future of AIDS, activism, gay culture, love, and (un)safe sex. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s I Remember poems, these confessions illuminate perspectives of queer Asian communities often absent from whitewashed narratives of HIV and AIDS. Grief, regret, longing, risk, and pleasure surface as their memories and fantasies blur into one another. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Maybe Never restages both a multitude of narratives about the loss of innocence and the changing nature of sexual fantasy and activity in the age of AIDS. While the question of Asian American identity is never specifically addressed, Nguyen's casting of Asian Americans as the objects of desire, the creators of fantasy and the participants in erotic exchanges with one another produces a distinctive aesthetic which firmly incorporates Asian American bodies, perspectives and imaginations within a contemporary sexual landscape of risk, desire, regret and creativity.

Until very recently, depictions of lesbians in the movies have ranged from apparitional to vampiric, salicious to sensationalistic, suggestive to exploitative, melodramatic to horrific. This video explores the portrayals of sapphic sexuality in the cinema from the 1930s to the present through the actions of the hand: touching, holding, feeling, grasping, shaking, exploring, penetrating, reaching out, pulling back, letting go.

Exeprimental film featuring images of the filmmaker inserted into classic 70's gay porn footage of Kip Noll.

Links gay pornography with liberation politics and the curtailment of sexual possibility.

Dalena is a blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-American white woman who is also a Vietnamese American pop star. A gift from God, she possesses the uncanny ability to sing in perfect Vietnamese. She mimics its beautiful cadences and difficult tones and imbues the songs with her unique melancholy style. Using clips from music videos, concert performances, and actual interviews, Hoang's video resists a simple dismissal of Dalena as yet another instance of cultural appropriation. He rather suggests that within the context of Vietnamese American musical production and consumption, a context marked by a recycling of pre-1975 repertoires, the novelty and innovation of the star-text 'Dalena' allow overseas Vietnamese music fans to negotiate the pressures of assimilation and reflect their desire to preserve a memory of what it means to be Vietnamese while living in America.