Film Screening w/ Q&A with Film Director, Adele Free Pham

Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance (SEATRiP) at UC Riverside is happy to announce a film screening of Nailed It (click to view trailer), along with a Question & Answer session with Film Director, Adele Free Pham.

This event is made possible through co-sponsorships from the UCR Women’s Resource Center, the UCR Asian Pacific Student Programs, and the UCR Center for Ideas and Society.

Please forward this announcement to all who may be interested!

More About the Film:
In virtually every city, state and strip mall across the U.S., women get their nails done in salons likely owned by Vietnamese entrepreneurs. How did this community come to dominate an $8 billion dollar nail economy? Nailed It takes viewers from Los Angeles to the Bronx to meet the diverse people and relationships behind this booming and enigmatic trade.

Among others, the film features Mantrap, a nail salon chain which found its start in Los Angeles by business partners Olivett Robinson and Charlie Vo, who opened nine locations, demonstrating a small business model that was copied so frequently it became a part of Vietnamese culture—and the American standard for Asian nail salons in black neighborhoods.

More About the Director/Producer:
Director/Producer/DP Adele Free Pham is an activist and filmmaker, with experience in all aspects of documentary production. Her feature documentary NAILED IT, about the genesis and culture of the Vietnamese nail industry had its broadcast premiere on PBS in May 2019, and is the highest streamed film of the America Reframed series. Her next feature STATE OF OREGON uses the 2016 murder of Larnell Bruce Jr. by a white supremacist as a narrative touchstone to expose Oregon’s founding as a separatist white homeland state—and 150 years of racial exclusion and violence that continues today. A short film by the same title was released by Field Of Vision in 2017 and has 187k views on social media.