CITY LIGHTS voice, and creativity on for size “to make the invisible women who power the fashion industry visible.” The District’s fashion followers will recognize the three panelists transforming the city’s style scene: Fia Thomas, owner of Fia’s Fabulous Finds, the independent secondhand boutique in Petworth; Sam Smith, the Baltimore creative behind New Vintage by Sam and a handcrafter of healing jewelry; and Leohana Carrera, an ethical fashion entrepreneur, human rights activist, and founder of the clothing reuse business Our ReStore. The three advocates for ethical fashion practices will discuss how their small businesses are modeling a more sustainable fashion ecosystem, and how everyone can tailor their sartorial approaches to be stewards of change. Here’s a sneak preview: Buy thoughtfully, swap enthusiastically, and restyle creatively. The event begins at 6 p.m. on July 31. Registration is available at eventbrite.com. Free. —Emma Francois
City Lights
Project Implicit
City Lights
Fagara
Fagara is both a Szechuan spice and the name of a 2019 Heiward Mak Hei-yan family drama. Fagara and Twilight’s Kiss are the two remaining films showing online through July 31 as part of the National Museum of Asian Art’s 25th annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival. Fagara is the story of a young professional Hong Kong travel agent, Acacia, played by Cantopop star Sammi Cheng Sau-man, who suddenly receives news of her father’s death—then discovers from his cell phone that she has two half-sisters. One sibling, Branch, is a Taiwanese professional pool player, and the other, Cherry, is a China-based fashion seller and influencer. Acacia also soon discovers that her father’s hot pot restaurant is in debt and that it will be up to her to pay the bills and
either run the place or sell it. Fagara’s screenplay is drawn from the 2011 novel My Spicy Love by Hong Kong romance author Amy Cheung. Although Cheung’s novels are sometimes stereotyped as “chick lit,” others point to elements in them that go beyond formula, and the movie largely does so as well. While the film touches on Acacia’s relationships with two suitors and the attempts of Cherry’s grandmother to find her a husband, the focus is on finding ways to numb familial pain and to forgive, via food and communication. The movie offers just enough humor to balance out the serious stuff and occasional mawkishness. The seemingly composed Acacia’s resentment of her late father (played by Kenny Bee) is quickly on view, but the funeral scene also establishes that she, like her halfsisters, never really knew her dad well: Acacia arranges a Taoist funeral, but in the middle of the ceremony, she is quietly informed by another relative that her father was Buddhist. And while we initially see the three sisters as
very different, soon, in a manner that mostly moves beyond cliché, the three bond and work together to find their dad’s hot pot recipe. The film is available through July 31 at asia.si.edu. Free. —Steve Kiviat
City Lights
Re-Fashioning D.C. The average American will toss 80 pounds of clothes into the trash annually, but experts estimate that 95 percent of those pre-loved clothes could be repurposed. In an upcoming virtual panel cheekily titled “Re-Fashioning D.C.,” local leaders combating fast fashion will discuss flouting this unsustainable system. The host, Remake, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that frames fashion as a “force for good,” urges consumers to try their purchasing power,
Do you associate certain types of people with goodness, moral purity, attractiveness, or foreignness? Visit Harvard’s implicit bias test portal if you can psych yourself up enough to see your results laid bare. This batch of recognition, association, archetype sorting, and image choice tasks will yield scores for various prejudices. This international research cooperation was created to serve as a public “virtual lab” for hidden bias recognition. By requiring takers to sort through pairings instantly, the test compels snap judgments and introduces a time penalty that makes it hard to trick. Possible results include slight, moderate, and strong labels of bias. And in 2011, the team released a spinoff site: At Project Implicit Mental Health, you can do additional tests that measure the implicit associations you have in relation to yourself. Some gauge, for example, the extent to which you associate yourself with anxiety, poor health, negativity, alcoholism, and sadness. Anonymous data is made publicly available for scientists and used to map implicit bias nationwide, including in D.C. The test has been granted a Golden Goose Award from the Library of Congress and funding from the National Institutes of Health. There’s no true quantitative “screening” for racism, and these assessments, though well-circulated, are not foolproof—and there’s controversy about their interpretation. For curiosity’s sake, however, it’s useful to know what your psyche has done with what you’ve been taught. Though the knowledge is no panacea, it still can have value. And if you’re hoping to rid your subconscious of discriminatory debris, this isn’t a terrible place to start. The project is available at implicit.harvard.edu. Free. —Tori Nagudi
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