

Take Out Screening
a film by Sean Baker, Tsou Shih-Ching
part 4 of 4 in our Independent, Actually series
2004, 90 min
Free to the public. RSVP encouraged due to limited seating.
Doors open at 7pm - Showtime at 7:30pm.
The American dream has rarely seemed so far away as in Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou’s raw, vérité Take Out, an immersion in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant struggling to get by on the margins of post-9/11 New York City.
Facing violent retaliation from a loan shark, restaurant deliveryman Ming Ding has until nightfall to pay back the money he owes, and he encounters both crushing setbacks and moments of unexpected humanity as he races against time to earn enough in tips over the course of a frantic day.
From this simple setup, Baker and Tsou fashion a kind of neorealist survival thriller of the everyday, shedding compassionate light on the too often overlooked lives and labor that keep New York running.