Getting Personal

Organizers redefine focus for the Asian American film fest

BY OLIVER WANG

Photo courtesy of NAATA

Camcorder Diary: The life of a young Iu Mien couple, Nai "Tony" Saelio and Kane Ian "Kelly" Saeteurn, is the subject of Kelly Loves Tony, which opens this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

In the lobby of San Francisco's Kabuki Theater is an imposing black box, hard to ignore or avoid. Emblazoned on it are the words "Size Does Matter," an ostentatious ad for this spring's blockbuster-to-be Godzilla. While the film world is still reeling from the colossal budgets of movies like Godzilla and Titanic, there's a growing tendency among some filmgoers to declare that bigger is better. However, quantity means little without quality--a lesson awaiting moviegoers returning to the Kabuki for the 16th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

As the flagship Asian American cinema series, the greatest challenge faced by the organization is finding ways to improve on its own success. In the last two years, the festival has grown into the largest film series of its kind, screening well over 100 films over the course of seven days. While the size of the festival has worked well enough in the past, patrons of this year's festival, which runs from March 5-12, will feature a slightly smaller but more select programming schedule.

Attendance exceeded all expectations at last year's festival with multiple sold out shows for many feature programs. But the organizers were victims of their own success, the festival staff was soon faced with patrons upset that seats for key shows quickly sold out. This year, the festival's chief organizers--film curator Linda Blackaby and filmmaker Kayo Hatta--want to insure that their top selections will be available to as many viewers as possible by offering double screenings for many of the more popular selections. In some cases, such as the opener, Kelly Loves Tony, up to three screenings will be made available to insure that most will have an opportunity to see the movie.

However, streamlining the programming has not meant scaling back the festival's overall scope. Presented by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, this year's festival features 35 different programs representing over 80 films from 14 countries. Included in this are five world premieres and over a dozen local premieres of hour-long and feature films, plus over three dozen new shorts.

As a filmmaker herself, Hatta is excited by this year's line up, particularly with the festival's continued commitment to increasing exposure for a Asian and Asian American movie makers. She says that "the festival is not only a place to showcase new and emerging talent, but it's also for those in the trenches like some of our established filmmakers. We have a nice continuum."

Kelly Loves Tony, a "camcorder diary" directed by veteran filmmaker Spencer Nakasako and shot by Oakland teenagers Kelly Saeteurn and Tony Saelio embodies this ideal. Like Nakasako's Emmy-award winning AKA Don Bonus, the documentary is crafted from the real-life story of Saeteurn and Saelio; a year of their lives is captured with a hand-held intimacy. It's an unflinchingly personal story of two teens caught up in the chaos of adult responsibilities, with everything from parenthood to immigration struggles standing between them. Blackaby suggests that Kelly Loves Tony was the obvious choice as an opener, saying that the film "brings the festival back home." He adds, "Spencer is working in an innovative and cutting edge form by helping people tell their own stories with the camcorder diaries."

In contrast, the festival's closing feature from Japan, My Secret Cache, is a fantastical foil to the graphic realism of Kelly Loves Tony. Hatta quips, "Kelly is survival--My Secret Cache is surreal." The movie, by off-beat director Shinobu Yaguchi, traces the story of a young bank teller, Sakiko, who becomes obsessed with stealing half a billion yen from a gang of robbers. Blackaby describes the film as "fun, accessible, loopy comedy" and Hatta adds that My Secret Cache intelligently satirizes "the problems of a very affluent society by taking it to a very absurd level. Yaguchi has created a real interesting statement about a rebellion against middle class values."

My Secret Cache also closes out a week of films from Japan. Like last year's strong programming from Korea's growing movie industry, this year's festival includes over a dozen films by Japanese filmmakers, including four features. Reflecting on some of the major events in Japanese cinema this past year, Hatta thinks that "especially in this year when Japan has lost such established stars as [actor] Toshiro Mifune, it'd be nice to highlight some of the new voices that are coming out." Along with features like Hirokazu Kore-eda's Without Memory and Nobuhiro Suwa's 2 Duo, Hatta is especially impressed by the award-winning Suzaku (Naomi Kawase) which she describes as, "a quietly confident film, intimately told in a very understated way."

This subtle cinematic beauty is contrasted against the sweeping grand wonder in the award-winning cinematography of Renee Tajima-Pena's documentary, My America ... Or Honk If You Love Buddha. Anchoring the festival's Friday Night Gala, My America is a "pan-Asian American road film," piecing together Tajima's existential trip across the United States, searching for eclectic personalities that reflect the diversity of Asian America. My America is also a cornerstone in this year's strong showing of Asian American features. Whereas last year's festival boasted four full-length Asian American movies, including Rea Tajiri's Strawberry Fields and Chris Chan Lee's Yellow, this year includes another series of compelling features by Asian American directors and screenwriters.

In addition to My America, there is the provocative Fakin Da Funk, a cross-cultural tale of a young Chinese American boy growing up in the black community of South Central Los Angeles. Directed by Tim Chey and starring Dante Brasco, Ernie Hudson, Pam Grier, and Margaret Cho, Fakin Da Funk takes an off-beat, comic look at race, culture, and identity between African Americans and Asian Americans.

Francisco Aliwalas wrote and directed the first Filipino American feature, Disoriented. The story of a pre-med student confronting family obligations and personal dreams, the film tries to touch on the complexity of Filipino life in America, all with what Hatta describes as a "really wonderful comic touch."

On the dark humor angle, Obits is a collaborative project put together by last year's squad of young independent directors: Michael Idemoto and Eric Nakamura (Sunsets), Chris Chan Lee (Yellow), Rea Tajiri (Strawberry Fields), and Justin Lin (Shopping For Fangs). The five team up to bring together a series of video perspectives on the inevitability of death.

Harish Saluja brings a South Asian portrait to the big screen with The Journey, which chronicles the visit of an elderly Indian grandfather to his son's family in America. Exploring the stresses of professional life on family cohesion, Saluja's film is an important exploration of South Asian American experiences, neatly dovetailing two other works exploring the South Asian diaspora in the United States. Shot in Atlanta, Miss India Georgia traces the fascinating entry of four women into a South Asian beauty pageant and Jayasri Hart's Roots in the Sand is an important documentary on the little known history of early Punjabi settlers who married Chicano farmers in California's Central Valley.

Other highlights include Forbidden City Cop, a major comedy from Hong Kong's Stephen Chiau Sing Chi. Unlike last year's beautifully somber Temptress Moon, Forbidden City Cop represents the other side of Chinese cinema's quixotic personality--off-the-wall and hilariously unpredictable.

Equally compelling is the festival's continued commitment to programs of film and video shorts. This year's She Said, She Said highlights eight short films by women directors, while the quirky MSG follows up on a traditional program of cinematic midnight madness.

With expectations so high, the festival staff is bracing for another record year, but Hatta wants to remind patrons that the festival is only a link in a greater chain of Asian American film. For her, the festival is the first exposure given to many of the featured films, but her hopes are that audience members will support Asian American cinema beyond the festival. She implores: "If you see a film at a festival, go out and see it again when it comes out [in theatrical release]. Don't wait until it comes to home video. You have to go out there and put your dollar down--it's like casting a ballot." For her, the festival fills an important gap by building an aware and educated audience who can help promote the expansion of Asian American cinema.

For her part, Hatta feels that the festival should keep its end of the bargain. "The possibilities are real good ... it's just a matter of time. We just have to consciously keep reminding our community and audiences to come out and watch our film," she says.

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