ITVS/WETA TV 26 Community Cinema Event
NEW YEAR BABY:  A Daughter’s Search for the Truth About Family Secrets

WHEN/WHERE:  SUNDAY, MAY 18 - 2 PM – co-presented with WETA TV 26 in partnership with Calvary Baptist Church and the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
Calvary Baptist Church, 755 Eighth Street, NW

ADMISSION:       No Admission fee - RSVP required – newyearbaby@communitycinema-dc.org;
                            Tel. 202-939-0794 (http://www.communitycinema-dc.org)

WHO:                   Independent Lens, ITVS, WETA TV 26, Calvary Baptist Church, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC), Social Action and Leadership School for Activists (S.A.L.S.A.), Busboys and Poets.

(WASHINGTON, DC) What would you do if everything you knew about your life was turned upside down? If your sisters weren’t really your sisters and your mother was married to someone else before your father? In her personal and moving film NEW YEAR BABY, Socheata Poeuv finds that long-held secrets hide not only painful memories, but also love forged under inhuman conditions.

ITVS/WETA TV 26 Community Cinema will present a FREE preview community screening of NEW YEAR BABY Sunday, May 18 at 2 PM at Washington’s Calvary Baptist Church (755 Eighth Street, NW). 
Community partners for the screening include the Social Action and Leadership School for Activists (S.A.L.S.A.) of the Institute for Policy Studies, Southeast Asia Action Resource Center, and Calvary Baptist Church. 

Filmmaker, Socheata Poeuv will participate in the Q&A following each screening.  Born in a refugee camp on April 13—the Cambodian New Year’s Day—Socheata Poeuv has always been called “the lucky one” by her family. Her parents, Ma and Pa, survived the Khmer Rouge, one of the cruelest political regimes ever documented, eventually escaping to Thailand and then moving the entire family to Texas. Once in the United States, Ma and Pa never talked about what happened in Cambodia, focusing instead on giving the kids a “normal American life.”

On Christmas Day 2002, with the entire family gathered together, Socheata’s parents reveal a secret they had kept for more than 25 years: Her older sisters weren’t really her sisters at all, and her brother was only her half-brother, the child of her mother’s previous marriage. While reeling from this new information, Socheata wonders what other secrets her parents might have left behind in Cambodia. She embarks on an emotional journey with Ma and Pa to their homeland, retracing the family’s path and picking up the lost pieces of her history along the way. She finds that to get to the bottom of her family’s story, she must understand what happened to her former country as well. Join us for this special event.