Asian festival hits 25
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The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival hits the 25 year mark this year, and kicks off this Thursday. Over the years it’s grown from relative obscurity to being a venue for “big-budget hollywood filmmakers, groundbreaking documentarians, and a brand-new Oscar winner.”
A few of the highlights for this year include Justin Lin’s latest, “Finishing the Game”, a comedy about the true-life events of Bruce Lee’s death and the search for his body double to complete his last fim, “Game of Death”.
Other filmmakers to note are Chris Chan Lee who’s showing his neo-noir film, “Undoing”, Rea Jajiri with “Strawberry Fields” and Michael Idemoto and Eric Nakumra with “Sunsets”.
This is a great thing, and i wish i were in San Francisco to see some of these shows. Get out there and show your support, guys! This is how we celebrate the modern Asian American identity.
Asian festival hits 25
G. Allen Johnson
Sunday, March 11, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/11/PKGISOD0OA1.DTL&type=printableBig-budget Hollywood filmmakers. Groundbreaking documentarians. And a brand-new Oscar winner. That’s just part of the legacy of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, which begins its 25th edition Thursday. In a very real way, the nation’s largest Asian-themed festival is celebrating two anniversaries: the beginning of the event itself, which started with just a few films screened over three nights at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley in October 1982; and a decade since the “Class of ‘97.”
“In 10 years, we’ve come up together. I feel great. I feel we’ve earned this community — we’ve earned this shared experience,” says Justin Lin, whose horror comedy “Shopping for Fangs,” co-directed by Quentin Lee, was one of four Asian American features in the festival in 1997, which organizers consider a watershed year in Asian American cinema that continues to reverberate today.
“Those four films were so different — each with a distinctive point of view, whether you liked it or not,” Lin says. “It felt empowering. These were voices I’d never seen before. … I was probably the most junior guy. I was in awe. I was nervous.”
Lin’s next film, “Better Luck Tomorrow,” was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002, opened the SFIAFF that year, and led to Hollywood jobs with “Annapolis” and “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.”
Now he’s returned to his roots, back to open the festival with another indie flick, “Finishing the Game,” a rollicking film set in 1970s Hollywood about the quest to find a body double for the recently departed Bruce Lee so a producer can finish the martial artist’s last film, “Game of Death.”
This time, he’s opening a festival that has become 125 films strong, spread over 10 venues in four Bay Area cities. Chris Chan Lee, another member of the Class of ‘97 with “Yellow” (the others were Rea Tajiri with “Strawberry Fields” and Michael Idemoto and Eric Nakamura with “Sunsets”), said the evolution is marked by its variety.
“I think that it’s been changing ever since there was an identifiable Asian American film movement,” says Lee, who is back this year with the neo-noir “Undoing.”
“We’re seeing more diverse films now, not just immigrant tales, which are, of course, very important, but many different kinds of experiences on the screen,” Lee says. “You can see that just by looking at the films in this festival.”
Twenty-five years ago, the picture was quite different.
“At the time, there were very few Asian American filmmakers, let alone Asian American film festivals,” Ruby Yang says. “Just to be able to show your film — in any festival, at any venue — was really great.”
Yang premiered her graduate thesis short, “Mirror Points,” at that first festival. Her first feature-length film, the documentary “Citizen Hong Kong,” closed the festival in 1999, and just two weeks ago her career reached its highest peak yet — Yang won an Oscar for best short documentary for her chronicle of one aspect of China’s AIDS crisis, “The Blood of Ying-zhou District.”
Yang, calling from Los Angeles the day after the Oscars, credits the structure of the Center for Asian American Media (formerly the National Asian American Telecommunications Association), which presents the festival, for fostering the growth of all kinds of Asian American films.
“For ‘Citizen Hong Kong,’ NAATA put in the development money, and without their support, the film wouldn’t have been possible,” Yang says.
The festival, which has undergone several name changes over the years and even took a break in 1985 (thus the neat trick of the 25th festival falling on the 25th anniversary year), has balanced established international features with Asian American works, which for a while were mostly documentaries, short films and the rare feature (Steven Okazaki’s 1987 indie favorite “Living on Tokyo Time,” for example). It expanded to a continuous eight-day schedule for the first time in 1992 (at the Kabuki, with a slate of about 40 films).
With young Asian American filmmakers filtering out of film school, more and more independent narrative features were filling the festival’s slate — Mina Shum’s “Double Happiness,” Kayo Hatta’s “Picture Bride” and, of course, those ‘97 guys.
“I remember being at the first screening and seeing a packed house,” Lee says. “My editor, Kenn Kashima, drove the print (up from Los Angeles) straight from the lab and got there an hour before the screening. We didn’t even know if the sound would be in synch. It was a real exciting time, but a real trying time because of all that we’d gone through to get this film ready after so many years. I lost like 30 pounds — I looked like a skeleton at the Q&A.”
So what filmmakers will be discovered at the 25th festival? By now, Asian American features are so common they have their own narrative competition — this year’s crop of 12 movies is being judged by Nakamura and another who attended the ‘97 festival and came away driven and inspired: actress Jacqueline Kim (”Charlotte Sometimes,” “Red Doors.”).
South Korean-Canadian filmmaker So Yong Kim might have the film of the festival with her work of low-budget genius, the coming-of-age tale “In Between Days.” Lee’s “Undoing” would be a worthy choice, and Lin’s long shadow hovers over the Juwan Chung’s gangsta tale “Baby”; also, “Charlotte Sometimes” director Eric Byler is back with “Tre.”
Keeping up its well-established nonfiction tradition, the festival also has an eight-film documentary competition, as well as a retrospective of San Francisco documentarian Spencer Nakasako’s nonfiction work. There is also the usual intriguing mix of international fare, including a retrospective of South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang Soo’s work.
A quarter of a century in, it’s really not about the films. It’s about the filmmakers and the audience members — the live human beings, in other words.
“The festival is a big part of me,” Lin says. “The biggest thing I’ve learned is that you can’t expect to take anything for granted because people are investing two hours of their time, and there are no excuses, whether your budget is $2 or $200 million. You’re accountable for those two hours.”
The 25th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs Thursday through March 25 at the AMC Van Ness Theaters, 1000 Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco, and at other Bay Area venues. (415) 865-1588, www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org.
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