Deftly satirizing the Bay Area's recent cell phone and laptop invasion and its hippiefied crystals-and-meditation remnants, POST CONCUSSION represents a new phase of Asian American comedic cinema--irreverent, organic and completely independent. Made by a first-time filmmaker with no formal training and who often functioned as the sole crew member, actor and editor, it embodies a do-it-yourself aesthetic and natural charm rarely seen since Wayne Wang's CHAN IS MISSING, one that's as liberating as it is entertaining.

Young, tough and annoyingly successful, Matthew Kang is the typical management consultant complete with a laptop, power suit and a corporate self-absorbed attitude. When a bruising car accident causes him massive head trauma, though, his life suddenly switches from the logical left brain to the disorganized right. Unable to focus on downsizing helpless workers or follow his coworkers' inane business metaphors ("It's fourth and twenty and you're inside your own ten yard line. I think you'd better punt.") he withdraws from the rigid corporate world and steps straight into an opposite extreme of militantly positive, oppressively healthy New Age followers and therapists, each a little too ready and willing to open up his chakras. Experiencing television-based hallucinations or having fractured conversations with his East German "friendly neighbor," soon he must decide which lifestyle, if any, to embrace.

Director/star Daniel Yoon taught himself filmmaking after suffering a similar debilitating head injury in Berkeley. Only able to film a few hours a day, he often acted as his own crew, setting up the lights, checking the sound and running the camera while darting in front to act. Finally, he edited the entire film on his home computer. Formally inventive, continually irreverent and astonishingly well-scripted, the film captures the banalities of cultural lingo from the boardroom to the yoga mat in this astounding debut. Made completely outside the traditional support structure, recalling the guerrilla aesthetic of Asian American film pioneers, POST CONCUSSION is a fitting close to this year's festival.