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See You At the Film Fest!

The 19th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

By Justin Lowe

Many film festivals seem content to open and close their events with veteran directors presenting new works, or celebrity filmmakers screening vanity projects. Contrary to these familiar formulas, the 19th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is bookending this year’s festival with two San Francisco premieres from first-time feature directors.

The SFIAAFF’s Chi-hui Yang explains that the choice of films emphasizes the commitment of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, the festival presenter, to emerging API artists. “We’re trying to support a new generation of Asian American filmmakers and give them a chance to exhibit [their work,] Yang says. He noted that the SFIAAFF is both a festival and a community event, providing an opportunity for filmmakers to gain widespread exposure and international recognition.

The opening and closing night screenings showcase feature films from the Filipino American community — a group still largely underrepresented in API cinema. Yang observes that over the last several years Filipino Americans nationwide have been eagerly anticipating the release of these productions, which are already considered critical successes.

This year’s SFIAAFF showcases five additional features by API directors to bring the total to seven — a festival record. Ann Hu’s period piece, Shadow Magic, the first co-production involving both Taiwanese and Mainland studios, reveals the 1902 Western introduction of cinema to China through the experience of photographer and evangelical cinephile Liu Jin Lun. Enthralled by foreigner Raymond Wallace’s demonstration of “shadow magic,” the first silent movies to screen in Beijing, Liu is prepared to risk his personal and professional prospects on the new technology.

But constrained by tradition and widespread xenophobia following the Boxer Rebellion, neither Beijing society nor Liu’s employer, photographer Master Ren is readily prepared to accept the arrival of cinema — until a birthday screening for the Empress Dowager unexpectedly propels Liu and Wallace into the arms of fate.

John H. Lee’s New York-set gangland blowout, The Cut Runs Deep, has first-timer flash to spare, as it examines the high cost of belonging. When 16-year-old Korean hapa restaurant delivery boy Ben (no last name — “just Ben”) is offered the opportunity to join a local gang of extortionists, he barely hesitates before burning down his former business, with a co-worker inside. Misplaced loyalties, petty disputes and a mysterious prostitute lead Ben far astray in his quest for acceptance, as his already fragile world relentlessly frays.

Iranian and Iranian American films have found a substantial audience in the United States, supported by an enthusiastic expat community. Ramin Serry’s feature Maryam scrutinizes the Iranian immigrant experience through the lens of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and the ensuing discrimination experienced by one family.

The racial politics of a Midwestern road crew frame director Abraham Lim’s feature debut Roads and Bridges, following on his widely acclaimed short, Fly, which grabbed the attention of Robert Altman and landed Lim a position editing Cookie’s Fortune.

I.K.U.

The SFIAAFF again breaks new ground with its first feature-length adult film (for mature audiences only), Shu Lea Chang’s I.K.U., a sci-fi cyberporn fantasy that picks up where Blade Runner left off, recounting the efforts of human replicant Reiko to achieve self-awareness through sex.

Nine features from India, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand and China provide the festival’s Asian perspective, but probably none is as skewed as Hong Kong action master Johnnie To’s foray into situation comedy, with Help!!!, aptly described as “a season of ER crammed into 90 minutes” of action and emergency room melodrama.

Dr. Joe has quit his position at the local hospital and taken a job as a car mechanic, fed up with his clock-watching, patient-dumping colleagues and cost-cutting superiors. But when the hospital’s leading benefactor convinces idealistic ingenue Dr. Yan and diehard Dr. Jim to recruit him back, Joe and his two fellow physicians attempt to reform hospital policies with an indefatigable team spirit — working epic ER shifts, maintaining high-tech hospital equipment and even cleaning the toilets themselves. The rest of the staff is inspired to action, pulling together when disaster inevitably strikes.

Director To’s action experience translates well to the hospital’s constant state of crisis, with complex camerawork, quick cutting and slick production design. A healthy dose of humor and boundless irreverence for a variety of official institutions have made this spoof a certified Hong Kong box office hit.

Not to be outdone, The Iron Ladies, a comedy based on actual events, is the second-highest grossing film in Thai history and has been an audience favorite at international festivals. Debut feature director Yongyoot Thongkongtoon has an irresistible formula: the quest of a predominantly gay/transvestite/transsexual Thai volleyball team to win the 1996 men’s national championships.

Lovelorn transvestite Mon and gal pal drag queen Jun get their chance at volleyball stardom when a new gay-friendly coach arrives, prompting the rest of the team to quit. The solution, of course, is to find more players of the same orientation, including a transsexual stage actress and the improbable transvestite triplets, April, May and June. Team spirit runs high, as the group coalesces into a force to be reckoned with, at the same time delivering a delightful riposte to individual and institutional homophobia enroute to the national competition.

Fulfilling a family legacy is always a challenge for a young filmmaker, particularly when your grandfather is one of Japan’s leading directors. Kaze Shindo initially took the well-travelled path and made Oji-chan, a documentary about her grandfather, prolific thriller director Kaneto Shindo, and has now branched out with her first feature, Love/Juice, an unusual tale concerning “a very strange relationship [between] a normal girl and a lesbian girl.”

Boy-chaser Kyoko shares a red house and even the same futon with photographer Chinatsu, but they aren’t lovers — at least not to begin with. Chinatsu lusts after Kyoko, who falls for Sakamoto, a local tropical fish shop assistant, in an increasingly complicated love triangle that inexorably alters the women’s relationship. Shindo has said she wanted the film to address some of the sexual undertones felt, but rarely acted on, in many relationships between close female friends.

From Korea, Happy Funeral Director is a comedy about the fate of a funeral parlor in a town where nobody has died in 10 years. Three reluctant young men recruited into the trade by the local undertaker find methods, both devious and lecherous, to bide the time, until a suicide victim provides the first opportunity for their professional services and a lesson in the vagaries of life and death.

SFIAAFF’s strong narrative offerings are complemented by twice as many documentary shorts than features, demonstrating the API community’s ongoing inquiry into issues of identity, racial politics,

The Chinatown Files

historical accuracy and cultural assimilation. Amy Chen’s The Chinatown Files unearths the once-classified hidden history of McCarthy-era anti-Communist discrimination against Chinese Americans, that is only recently coming to light. Through archival footage and interviews culled from more than 100 oral histories, the film provides valuable historical perspective on the Wen Ho Lee case and other recent allegations of Asian American “disloyalty.”

The Split Horn

It would be difficult for another documentary to equal the scope of Taggart Siegel’s film The Split Horn: The Life of a Hmong Shaman in America, a 17-year project to record the gradual transformation of Wisconsin’s Laotian-refugee Thao family. The Thaos allowed Siegel an unusual level of access, to document family members’ struggles with cultural fidelity and assimilation, particularly the conflicts between Hmong shaman Paja Thao and his increasingly Americanized children.

Semiautomatic from the Directions in Sound program

Other special programs include an expansion of last year’s highly popular Directions in Sound presentation to two nights of performances by API hip hop, indie rock and pop musicians at San Francisco’s Cafe du Nord and the Justice League, which will also feature screenings of music videos from the likes of Kid Koala, Sean Lennon and Semiautomatic.

Short films are gathered into a dozen different programs. Festival director Chi-hui Yang observes that among the shorts programs, “the quality is way up — this year’s programs are incredible.”

Included are Blue Love, with takes on relationships both romantic and dyspeptic; Secret Sounds, a collection of experimental shorts

Wide Eyed of the Smells Like Teen Spirit program

curated by Bay Area video artist Valerie Soe; the Smells Like Teen Spirit selection of films about youth; and the lesbian and gay programming of the Grrrls, Uninterrupted and Homo Knock Knock series. In particular, Yang mentions the Sins and Daughters program, examining the implications of complex family dynamics for female characters, saying “These four women directors are dramatically raising the bar in narrative filmmaking.”

With 97 films to choose from, the SFIAFF is the largest exhibition of API and Asian film in North America, as well as a valuable opportunity to interact with talented filmmakers, actors and industry representatives from all over the world. Not to mention that audiences gain bragging rights to productions — weeks, or even months, before they screen for the general public.

The SFIAAFF runs March 8-15 in San Francisco and Berkeley, and March 17-18 in San Jose. Call 415/255-4299 for festival information or go online to http://www.naatanet.org/festival/2001.