Cinematic snapshot.

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

SAN FRANCISCO, BERKELEY, AND SAN JOSE

MARCH 15-25, 2007

Originating in 1982, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is one of the oldest and perhaps the preeminent showcase for new Asian American films in North America. Of the dozen or so Asian American and Asian Canadian film festivals occurring each year, the SFIAAFF is the largest in size and scope. It also occurs earliest in the festival calendar year, and its programming influences many of the Asian American festivals that follow. Thus, a screening in the SFIAAFF can lead to wider exposure later on.

In its twenty-five year history, the SFIAAFF has screened films by nearly every notable Asian American director, including Christine Choy, Ang Lee, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Mira Nair, and Wayne Wang. This year's festival included 126 films from the United States and abroad.

After eight years with director Chi-hui Yang at the helm, the festival now strikes a comfortable balance among the many different aspects of the Asian American film community. Old and new films, narratives and documentaries, local and international work, shorts and feature films, as well as several panel discussions, a tribute to seminal filmmaker Spencer Nakasako, and a sing-along Flower Drum Song made up the mix of the festival, presented at eleven venues in three Bay Area cities. Despite potential logistical and programming challenges, the proceedings hummed along smoothly, with each discrete element complementing the overall vision of the festival. The festival also reflected the increasing diversity of the Asian American community as well as the growth and maturity of Asian American filmmakers at large. Several veteran filmmakers premiered new works, while several younger filmmakers made their festival debuts.

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The festival boasted several Asian American narratives that dove into genre filmmaking. Chris Chan Lee's Undoing (2006) and Juwan Chung's Baby (2005) both revisited the gangster film by delving into the Korean American underworld; Gene Rhee's The Trouble With Romance (2007) and David Ren and Kern Konwiser's Shanghai Kiss (2007) took on the romantic comedy; Grace Lee's engaging monster movie American Zombie (2007) looked slyly at identity politics; and Romeo Candido reworked the horror genre with his Filipino Canadian ghost story, Ang Pamana: The Inheritance (2006).

Despite the abundance of genre films, some of the festival's most memorable narratives broke away from genre conventions. So Yong Kim's In Between Days (2006), which was shot on digital video with a nonprofessional cast, looked at the everyday angst and ennui of a Korean Canadian teenager, her mother, and her ambivalent love interest. Acutely low-key and hyper-realistic, the film created drama out of small events. Eric Byler, director of Charlotte Sometimes (2002) and Americanese (2006), continued his examination of the darker side of interpersonal relationships with Tre (2006). As with Charlotte Sometimes, Tre is an Asian American film that does not overtly deal with Asian American identity--two of Byler's actors are mixed-heritage Asians, as is Byler, yet the film does not specifically address "hapa" issues, but instead looks at the various and universal intricacies of intimate relations.

Other narrative films in the festival, however, dealt more directly with identity politics. The opening film, Finishing the Game (2007), was Justin Lin's return to independent filmmaking after various Hollywood forays (Annapolis [2006], The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift [2006]). A satirical take on misrepresentations of Asian men in American cinema, the film followed the travails of several improbable successors to the late Bruce Lee, including a blue-eyed half-Chinese bartender, an Indian doctor-turned-actor, and the memorably named Bruce-wannabe Breeze Loo. Judging by the enthusiasm expressed during the screening's Q & A by the film's actors, the project held special meaning for the cast, many of whom are veterans of Hollywood's cutthroat and often discriminatory casting practices. The film's art direction was also picture-perfect, evoking the shag haircuts and burnt orange wallpaper aesthetic of the early 1970s.

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The festival's closing night film, Dark Matter (2007), by Shi-Zheng Chen, took a more baroque tack in its exposition of issues facing new Asian American immigrants. The film examined the intense psychological warfare of modern academia, following the struggles of an ex-patriot Chinese student at a fictional Midwestern college, his encounters with cultural dislocation and professional jealousy, and his tragic response to thwarted career ambitions. Evocative and expressionistic, reflecting Chen's prior work in Chinese opera, the film was also oddly prescient of the Virginia Tech massacre--one wonders how current events will affect the film's distribution opportunities.

The festival also included screenings of several new Asian American documentaries, including veteran filmmaker Arthur Dong's Hollywood Chinese (2007), the festival's centerpiece presentation. An ambitious and encyclopedic look at the participation of Chinese Americans in American feature filmmaking, Hollywood Chinese included rare footage from one of the first films written and directed by a Chinese American, The Curse of Quon Gwon, shot in 1916 by Oakland, California, native Marion Wong. Hollywood Chinese also included interviews with significant participants, including performers Nancy Kwan (The World Of Suzie Wong [1960]); Luise Rainer, who won an Oscar for her yellowface performance in The Good Earth (1937); and B.D. Wong, as well as directors Ang Lee and Lin, and film historian Stephen Gong.

Younger documentarians were also well-represented, with films including Socheata Poeuv's New Year Baby (2006), a poignant and charming first-person account of the filmmaker's journey back to Cambodia two decades after her family's flight from the Khmer Rouge. Interspersing her family's harrowing story with somber yet engaging animation sequences, the film testifies to the resiliency of the human spirit throughout the horrors of wartime atrocities. New Year Baby was one of three new documentaries about the Southeast Asian refugee experience, in addition to Doan Hoang's Oh, Saigon (2007) and Duc Nguyen's Bolinao 52 (2007). Other documentary selections further reflected the increasing diversity of the Asian American community: A Dream In Doubt (2007, by Tami Yeager), which recounts the murder of a Sikh man following 9/11; Koryo Saram--The Unreliable People (2007, by Y. David Chung and Matt Dibble), told in Russian, Korean, and Kazakh; and Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula (2006, by Lisette Marie Flanary), which looks at male practitioners of Hawai'i's famous dance form.

Notable among the festival's short films was Tad Nakamura's Pilgrimage (2006), a brief look at the history of the Manzanar Pilgrimage, the annual trek to one of the sites of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Nakamura's film, accentuated by subtle and effective editing effects, deftly interwove archival footage, interviews, and a soundtrack featuring the seminal Asian American singing group, A Grain of Sand, to celebrate the reclamation of history and the significance of resistance in the Japanese American community.

Acknowledging the ties between Asia and the Asian diaspora as well as recognizing the large audience for new work from overseas, the festival also included films by several notable international directors, including Hong Kong director Johnnie To's latest postmodern gangster saga, Exiled (2006), and Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul's strange and beautiful Syndromes and a Century (2006). The festival spotlighted the work of Korean director Hong Sang-soo, with a retrospective of his films that included The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) and a trio of Bay Area premieres, Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), Tale of Cinema (2005), and Woman on the Beach (2006).

Despite the challenges of adequately representing the diverse Asian American community, as well as the task of wading through the increasing amount of product put out by Asian and Asian American filmmakers, SFIAAFF managed to put together a cohesive and comprehensive yet wide-ranging, provocative, and entertaining festival. As the flagship event of the Asian American film festival season, SFIAAFF provided a snapshot of the current state of Asian American cinema, reflected in the festival's lively trailer. This paean to Asian American entertainment zoomed out from a close-up of a single singing individual to a wide shot of a theater filled with exuberantly dancing and swaying performers--firefighters, cheerleaders, lion dancers, a marching band, and a person dressed as a horse, among many others. Somehow this aptly represented the festival's modus operandi: start with the individual filmmaker's vision, place it in the context of the community at large, be as inclusive as possible, and embrace the results--expected or unexpected--that follow.

VALERIE SOE is a video artist, educator, and writer from San Francisco whose work has been screened extensively across the United States and abroad.