Q&A

Borshay Liem’s Double Exposure of Korean Adoptions

By Michael Fox

Deann Borshay Liem’s terrific 1999 documentary First Person Plural recounted her experience as an orphaned Korean adoptee raised by a Caucasian family in an East Bay suburb. Only she wasn’t an orphan, and the second half of the film is devoted to locating and meeting her birth mother and siblings. A decade later, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee finds Liem revisiting her adoption and identity from another, equally compelling perspective. The Korean documents identified her as Cha Jung Hee, but eight-year-old Deann (as her adoptive parents christened her) knew that wasn’t her name. All these years later, the filmmaker determines to get to the bottom of the mystery, and find the person for whom she was substituted. Scheduled to air nationally on PBS’s “P.O.V.” in September, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee has its world premiere in the "28th San Francisco International Asian America Film Festival": http://festival.asianamericanmedia.org/ this Friday, March 12 at 6:45 at the Clay Theatre, with additional screenings Saturday, March 13 in Berkeley (Pacific Film Archive) and Sunday, March 21 in San Jose (Camera Cinemas).

topics: activism, asian american cinema, directors, documentary, immigration, sf international asian american film festival, women filmmakers, world cinema

Experience

28th SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival Opens

By Dennis Harvey

This year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival observes an organizational milestone: 2010 marks the beginning of a fourth decade for the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), hitherto known (until 2005) as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA).

CAAM’s and NAATA’s achievements over the last 30 years are too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that an organization originally founded to nurture Asian American filmmakers (an effort given further muscle by strong support from the Center for Public Broadcasting) as well as counter ethnic stereotypes still prevailing in popular media (perhaps peaking with the protests against mid-late ’80s thrillers Year of the Dragon and Black Rain) has long since accomplished all that and more. Today’s CAAM can look back on helping to foster such important high-profile voices as Wayne Wang and Ang Lee, while stoking both present and future makers via its distribution, PBS presentation and funding arms.

topics: activism, actors, asian american cinema, asian cinema, audiences, bay area, sf international asian american film festival, women filmmakers, world cinema, youth

Critic's Notebook

'Village' Offers New Look at New Orleans

By Judy Stone

S. Leo Chiang, born and raised in Taiwan, knew what it was like to be an outsider in the United States, so the seemingly inexplicable rebellion of previously docile Vietnamese residents in New Orleans was an ideal subject for this documentary director.

It took him more than a year to track down bits and pieces of film from unclassified archives at the University of New Orleans that could reconstruct the untold story of what happened to the 5,000 residents of the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam after the 2005 Katrina hurricane wreaked havoc on that Louisiana city.

topics: activism, asian american cinema, bay area, directors, diy, documentary

Critic's Notebook

Gazing West with 'Sweetgrass'

By Dennis Harvey

There will probably never be a theatrical release for a film by James Benning, the Southern California-based filmmaker who recently made one of his frequent Bay Area visits for a four-night series of works presented by San Francisco Cinematheque. Benning’s landscape-focused movies often consist of very long stationary shots (sometimes as long as ten minutes each) sans commentary, interviews, explanatory text, or any sound save live found ones. They’re extraordinary, if a little too “pure” for the average moviegoer—even most arthouse habitues.

Amazingly, however, the marital filmmaking team of Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor have managed not only to score theatrical distribution but also make something of a splash with Sweetgrass, a new documentary opening this weekend that is almost as hypnotically austere in style and content as the films in Benning’s oeuvre.

topics: bay area, directors, documentary, environmental films, women filmmakers, world cinema

Report

Bay Area's Pixar rises again at Oscars

By Michael Fox

Cementing its status as the preeminent animation company of the ‘00s, Pixar won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the third time in seven years. Up director Pete Docter collected his first trophy in six trips, a stunning run that includes original screenplay nominations for Toy Story (1995), Wall-E (2008) and Up. The helium-fueled adventure was further buoyed by Michael Giacchino’s Oscar for original score, the category in which he was nominated two years ago for Ratatouille.

Pixar received five nominations altogether, including Best Picture (snagged by The Hurt Locker, directed by San Carlos native and San Francisco Art Institute alum Kathryn Bigelow), Original Screenplay (awarded to Mark Boal’s for The Hurt Locker over Docter and co-writer Bob Peterson) and Mixing.

topics: activism, animation, awards, bay area, hollywood, independent film, oscars