The 1980s were all about big hair, arcades and new genres — including new wave music.
Screening Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Downer Theater, a new documentary explores how first-generation Vietnamese immigrants influenced the new wave music scene and staked their claim in a new country.
Elizabeth Ai is the director of the feature documentary New Wave. She joins WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez ahead of the film’s premiere in Milwaukee.
"New wave was not just a sound, a music, a genre, but it was also a world that they built that rebelled against the status quo," she says.
Caught between the expectations of their parents and those of dominant U.S. culture, the new wave scene offered the film's subjects an outlet for self-expression.
"The question that I wanted to answer in some capacity — or ask more questions about — was why did they need this music?" Ai says.
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