Critic's Notebook

SF International Asian American Film Festival Visits the Archives

A theme that emerged in this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) was the importance of archives in the film world. The existence of film archives and restoration facilities all have a part to play in the films of Lino Brocka (who received retrospective treatment in the fest), Kim Ki-young’s 1960s classic The Housemaid, Ruby Yang’s documentary A Moment in Time (about Chinese American movie houses of old San Francisco), documentaries such as Aoki and State of Aloha that make heavy use of archival footage to tell their non-fiction narratives, and even an Austrian director’s film about representatives of the North Korean women’s soccer team, Hana, Dul, Sed….　

topics: activism, asian american cinema, asian cinema, audiences, authors, awards, bay area, blogs, sf international asian american film festival

Review

Bong Joon-ho's Latest, 'Mother', Pleases

Already one of the heroes of South Korean cinema’s recent creative renaissance, Bong Joon-ho had an international success well beyond arthouse parameters with 2006’s The Host. That delightfully old-fashioned (albeit with up-to-the-moment CGI effects) sci-fi monster movie with a distinct local flavor managed what so many similar Hollywood exercises fail to do: Deliver thrills and spectacle without stinting on character involvement, social commentary, humor or even poignancy.

topics: actors, asian cinema, directors, genre films, world cinema

Experience

28th SF Int'l Asian American Film Festival Opens

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

Experience

A tour through Taiwan Film Days

For the regular film festival attendee, Taiwanese Cinema has been associated with three names: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang and the late Edward Yang. But for three days starting November 6, the San Francisco Film Society offers a chance to see contemporary Taiwanese cinema beyond the work of those three masters.

Two of the films screening in Taiwan Film Days were official Oscar entries for the Best Foreign Language film from Taiwan. Opening-nighter Cape No. 7 (Wei Te-sheng, 2008) was 2009’s submission; it follows an unlikely rock band—unlikely in that the ages of the members range from about that of the Jonas Brothers to about the Rolling Stones.

topics: art film, asian cinema, authors, bay area, san francisco film society, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

"Thirst" proves the vampire genre has not been bled dry

It was neck-and-neck there with zombies for a while, but in the wake of Twilight mania and escalating True Blood, it is safe to say vampires are the It Ghoul of our cultural moment. The zombie thing made sense in terms of general apocalyptic thought trends (2012, global warming, look-who’s-nuking-now, etc.). Still, the commingling of sex, violence and morbidity inherent in vampirism can always wrestle just about any other supernatural myth to the mat, popular appeal-wise.

The question is, with this particular undead feeding frenzy looking like there’s no end in imminent sight, can our creators of film, TV and lit find ways to pump new blood into the genre?

topics: actors, asian cinema, audiences, genre films, world cinema

Take Two

Instinct propels "Lion's Den"; a fact-fiction mix animates "24 City"

The best filmmakers working in the neorealist tradition today—the Dardenne brothers, Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani—turn the ordinary into the extraordinary with deceptive ease. Argentinian director Pablo Trapero has joined them with a growing list of films whose protagonists battle the pressures of the everyday in stories that turn out to be phenomenally unique.

He gained public attention at festivals, including the SF International, in 1999 with Mundo Grua (Crane World), a 16mm black-and-white character study of an ex-musician with an obesity problem attempting to find work in construction. His demons were beef and pasta and his charms, against a wide-open South American sky, were many.

topics: asian cinema, bay area, film festivals, landmark theatres, san francisco international film festival, sffs screen, south american film, world cinema

Take Two

"Night and Day:" Location, location, locution

Hong Sang-soo’s latest unraveling of the South Korean male ego is set in the City of Lights, but location matters less than locution in Hong’s world of mutual misunderstanding. The writer-director’s uneasy comedies depend more on structural calibration and emotional wavering than disposable yucks, and if Night and Day isn’t so tightly wound as some of his earlier bifurcated work, it still has more designs on us than we on it. One may chuckle at leading buffoon Seong-nam’s (Kim Yeong-ho) hopeless stabs at conversation (he is the type of fellow who, caught off guard by a female conquest telling him she prefers women, blurts out, “I know…but why do you have it emphasize that?”), but we’re just as likely to be boggled by his idiocy, especially since the film’s naturalistic dramaturgy would seem to promise a conventional approach to character. Hong’s is a distinctly modernist take on callowness.

topics: asian cinema