A Village Called Versailles – Film Screening and Talk With Filmmaker Leo Chiang and Scholar Julie Sze, UC Davis

Winner of the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and New Orleans Film Festival, A Village Called Versailles is filmmaker Leo Chiangʼs feature documentary about Versailles, an isolated community in eastern New Orleans that has been settled by Vietnamese refugees since the late 1970s. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Versailles residents impressively rise to the challenges by returning and rebuilding before any other flooded neighborhood in New Orleans, only to have their homes threatened by a new government-imposed toxic landfill just two miles away. The film recounts the empowering story of how this group of people, who have already suffered so much in their lifetime, turns a devastating disaster into a catalyst for change and a chance for a better future.

Following the film, Julie Sze, Associate Professor of American Studies at University of California at Davis and author of Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice will be in conversation with Chiang about the broader issues of race and environmental justice covered in the film affecting Asian American communities.