Resfest Promises to Provide
By Justin Lowe
Special to AsianWeek
Resfest, the itinerant digital film festival, begins its sixth annual tour today with a return to home base in the Bay Area. Originating in San Francisco in 1997, Resfest has expanded to venues nationwide and added dates in South America, Europe and Asia for a total of 14 international cities.
The festival features an eclectic mix of features, documentaries and short films, but distinguishes itself with a global focus on digital filmmaking and music videos. Sixty shorts are organized into eight programs, including documentary contributions in the “True Stories” series, the erotic offerings of “In the Bedroom” and Resfest’s first rock-music program, “Videos That Rock!”
Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s video for DJ Shadow’s “Six Days” is a standout in the “Cinema Electronica” program, plumbing the depths of a broken relationship and the indelible reminders of a lover’s betrayal. Wong shot the short in Hong Kong for DJ Shadow while on a break from directing 2046, his upcoming feature film starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi.
With a Tokyo play date and a strong following in Japan, it’s not surprising that Japanese directors predominate among the festival’s Asian filmmakers. Included are “Drop (Do It Again),” Koichiro Tsujikawa’s music video for electronica performer Cornelius; “Head Long and Explosion” from the multimedia animation collective TGB Design; and the live-action short “Japanese Tradition (Sushi)” by Junji Kojima. Asian Pacific American director Greg Pak’s “All Amateur Ecstasy” is a sly, amusing take on the home-grown porn genre, while APA filmmaker Chih Cheng-peng’s “Whizeewhig” appears in the “State of the Art” program.
Headlining this year’s feature films is Fulltime Killer by Hong Kong “enfants terribles” Jonnie To and Wai Ka-fai. True to their reputation for creating quirky, clever mayhem with stylish action movies, the pair again deliver an explosive thriller starring pop idol Andy Lau as Tok, an ambitious hit man determined to replace Asia’s top assassin, known only as “O” (Takashi Sorimachi).
Hopscotching from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong to Tokyo, Tok’s relentless campaign against O quickly escalates as the upstart barges in on his rival’s hits, steals his girl (Kelly Lin, as a curious and impressionable video store clerk) and tries to lead him into the path of a determined Interpol investigator (Simon Yam), the film’s traumatized narrator.
Displaying a gleeful disregard for genre classifications, temporal continuity and the specifics of national origin, To and Wai delight in mixing filmic references, locations and languages as their characters generate maximum momentum on a path to certain, incendiary collision. The documentary Breath Control, a profile on beat boxers (hip hop musicians who produce an amazing variety of musical effects using only their mouths and voices), rounds out the feature-length films.
The festival also includes a free seminar on digital filmmaking and several post-screening parties featuring live DJ performances. With a unique corner on the independent film scene, Resfest is always a welcome guest on the Bay Area’s crowded festival calendar.
Resfest plays Sept. 18-22 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Call 866-737-3378 or visit www.resfest.com for tickets and program information.
Reach Justin Lowe at nextwavve@yahoo.com.
|
