Critic's Notebook

San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

Cherry blossoms overflow the sidewalks and strangers suddenly seem willing to make eye contact. Spring in San Francisco, which, for the local film fan, means the start of festival season, a parade of one-time-only screenings running from the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival all the way up to July’s Silent Film Festival weekend. Now in its 26th year, SFIAAFF has grown from being a niche event to a major contender on the international festival circuit—with more than enough voices and crossovers to justify its unwieldy moniker.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, center for asian american media, directors, documentary, dvd, sundance kabuki

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Platform

Daniel Wu

Last year, when Daniel Wu came back to his native Bay Area with his directorial debut, “The Heavenly Kings,” which screened at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival, SF360.org contributor Jennifer Young reminded us of the joke that had been circulating online—that a Chinese law exists requiring Daniel Wu to be featured in every Hong Kong film. Still one of Hong Kong’s most prolific actors, Wu is visiting the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival this week with Alexi Tan’s “Blood Brothers.” Young got a chance to visit again with the actor when the film screened at the Castro this past Friday.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, bay area, castro theatre, center for asian american media, critics, cult cinema, film festivals

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Chuck Stephens: Your "Citizen Dog," and mine

From my vantage in the cramped backseat of a Toyota minivan that’s serving the talent wagon for a deliriously over-designed new love story entitled “Citizen Dog” – the second feature film by my friend and director, Wisit Sasanatieng, one of Thailand’s most promising young cinematic mavericks – I watch as the insect dawn over Muang Thong Thani begins to leech away. A planned satellite suburb of Bangkok whose name translates as “Golden City” – nevermind that this would-be bedroom community’s developers went bust just before their “miracle mile” of modern highrise condos were completed – Muang Thong Thani is, on most days, as quiet and uninhabited as the dark side of the moon.

But on this sooty, sweat-stained March morning in 2004, the ghost-city’s sidewalks are strangely bustling with an assortment of men, women, and children all identically dressed in powder-blue maid’s uniforms; in its streets, a protest rally surges past a pair of love-struck country kids still dazed by the chaos of this make-believe modern metropolis; and in an alleyway nearby, a zealous beat-cop is readying to pursue a conspicuously Western-featured street-vendor of suspicious reading materials who’s been blocking shopper’s ways. And in these last few moments of pre-celebrity mindfulness before I step before Wisit’s camera to make my big-screen debut as the shifty-eyed farang who may or may not hold the secret to “Citizen Dog”‘s heroine’s romantic dreams, I struggle to reassure myself of two ineluctable things: 1) that everything changes, or can at least be made to appear that way, and 2), that at least I am dressed accordingly – in a billowing tie-dye shirt tinted an altogether unseemly shade of chartreuse, and a pair of slightly-too-small white Converse hightops which are definitely not my own.

- Chuck Stephens, San Francisco Bay Guardian film critic, Bangkok movie star.

topics: asian cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, critics, independent film

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Vietnamese American filmmaker Ham Tran rights an historical wrong

The closing night film at this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, “Journey From The Fall,” is the first feature film from my former UCLA classmate, Ham Tran. Even before making his award-winning student thesis, “The Anniversary” (2004), the director was focused with bringing to the screen the story of millions forced into re-education camps and the high seas after the Communist take over of Vietnam in 1975. Foremost for Tran, who came to the US in 1982 at the age of 8, was the need to specifically create a film about the war years from a Vietnamese perspective.

“Journey From The Fall” is the epic story of a divided family’s painful struggle to reach America. The film was shot by acclaimed DP Guillermo Rosas (“Before Night Falls”) and features performances from many top Vietnamese actors including screen veteran Kieu Chinh (“The Joy Luck Club,” “Green Dragon”) and pop singer Cat Ly. For many of the Vietnamese actors and technicians who worked on “Journey From the Fall,” the film proved to be a cathartic experience, since many had been survivors or were family members of those who had lived through conflict in Southeast Asia.

I caught up with Ham Tran this past weekend by phone in Los Angeles as he was getting ready to make his way up for the festival.

SF360: First of all, congratulations on your closing night screening. It’s fantastic.

Ham Tran: Thanks. I’m excited.

SF360: How important to you is the screening this week at the Palace of Fine Arts?

Tran: For me, it is very important because it has to do with grassroots effort. I think ultimately the success of this film is all about the audience.

SF360: It’s like a second battle. We spent five years in production on ‘I Am A Sex Addict.’ Now, it’s going from video store to video store leaving postcards and putting up posters to get ready for the opening. It’s kind of overwhelming. Sometimes it seems like every screening can be a make or break.

Tran: I’ve learned not to plan too much. I just try to make the best of every screening because you never know who’s gonna be coming to watch.

SF360: Is the film going to be shown in Vietnam?

Tran: Right now, I don’t know, because of the political nature of the film. We could not get permission to shoot in Vietnam. Vietnam as a filmmaking industry is growing and becoming really liberal. When we did the work-in-progress screening back in April, 2005, there was a woman who worked for a Vietnamese TV station in Vietnam. She had seen the film, and she said ‘You know what, I’m going to see if I can help you guys to get this film screened.’ That gave us a lot of hope. We’re still following up on that lead.

SF360: But other than that, there’s not been any official word from the higher-up film organizations?

Tran: The censorship is strict over there. Back in November or December, there was an article that was sent to me from a Vietnamese newspaper. It said that this film was an anti-communist film. And when I read that, my heart froze just a little bit. Does that mean I’m black-listed now? But apparently, our website is still accessible in Vietnam. We were thinking that once we actually have the theatrical distribution, I actually want to submit a letter to the film board over there, to see if there’s a way that we can screen the film in Vietnam.

SF360: I read in an interview in which you said that it’s important for the Vietnamese community to turn out for Vietnamese movies. Do you differentiate between the cinema coming out of Vietnam and the movies made by people who live outside of Vietnam – or are they all one and the same?

Tran: They’re all one and the same. I think that to think otherwise is actually harmful to us as a community. One of the major problems that I feel with the Vietnamese community here is that there is so much bitterness and pain that’s still harbored when it comes to anything from Vietnam. A Vietnamese theater group can come over here and the community will not go to see them, and on top of that, they protest. For me, that’s really divisive. I think that in order to move on, there are certain things you have to acknowledge and let go, and open up to discussion. It’s up to the youth now to bridge that gap between the two communities.

SF360: Could you ever actually see yourself going to Vietnam and making a film there?

Tran: That would be my dream come true, actually. I do want to be able to go back there and shoot a film. I feel at home there.

SF360: Let’s go to the beginning. How did the idea of the film come about?

Tran: The idea for ‘Journey From The Fall’ came when I was researching for my short film, ‘The Anniversary’. I came across this Time-Life series on the Vietnam War. It was like a ten-volume set, and one of the last ones was on the aftermath of the war. One picture really struck me. It was of a woman who was burned, and she was being lifted from the boat during a rescue operation. The story was that her mother had poured boiling hot water on her to keep her from being raped by pirates. After I saw that, I started talking to a number of my friends. One in particular was a boat person, and her father was in a re-education camp. Their boat had been adrift for 21 days, and they were hit every other day by pirates. She watched this one woman – every single time the pirates would attack them, there was one woman who was sure to get raped. By the time they had landed, she went insane.
So I started gathering data, and I researched this film for three years.

SF360: From what I’ve read, the film also came out of the idea that the Vietnamese experience has not been represented in the Hollywood mainstream.

Tran: Exactly. For me, making ‘The Anniversary’ was the first step, because the short was about the Vietnam War as a civil war. And that has never really been looked at in that way. I felt when I made ‘The Anniversary,’ it was something that the Vietnamese community needed to begin a healing process. Because we are all victims of circumstance. We’re here as refugees. We were seeking political asylum. We didn’t up and decide one day to leave Vietnam. We had to leave Vietnam. And I feel that that’s left a very deep scar within the community, and it hasn’t quite healed yet. I think a lot of people take it for granted that there are Vietnamese immigrants here. Nobody really takes the time to find out why they are here.

SF360: To you, what’s the biggest misconception Hollywood perpetrates about Vietnam?

Tran: The Vietnam War was a war of independence. It was our civil war, and it tore families up. And every time you watch Hollywood films about Vietnam, it’s always America versus Vietnam. For us, the re-education camps were like the Vietnamese Holocaust on a really small scale. But it did happen. It happened to over 200,000 Vietnamese. And the boat people…I mean, between 1975 and 1990, there were 2 million people who fled by boat, and lord knows how many hundreds of thousands of people died on the way. This has never been talked about. It’s an authentic Vietnamese experience.

SF360: Is this story based on a single true story or several stories?

Tran: It was a collage of a lot of stories that I have researched along the way. The only way we made this picture was through the community contribution. It was really a group effort. Our make-up artist was a boat person, our costume designer was a boat person, her father was in prison for – I don’t know how many years, eight or something. Everybody who was involved had a personal connection to the film.

SF360: How difficult was the shoot?

Tran: I have so many war stories. Our set for the re-education camp was flooded four times.

SF360: What happened?

Tran: We shot that on a piece of farm land in Thailand. It was perfect for the location we needed, but the farmer said ‘There is only one thing. One day out of the year, we have a flood.’ He added, ‘But that’s not going to happen, because the government just built this huge dam that’s going to control the flow of rain water’. So we built the set and sure enough, one week before shooting, it flooded. And the water went up ten feet. We had planted a field of corn. The flood took all the corn away. So he had to repaint the entire camp, and then the next night, it flooded again. When we flew back to prep for the shoot, the week before, I had to visit the camp location in a canoe. We were paddling by the rooftops of our set, saying, ‘OK, if the water comes down, we’re going to shoot here.’

SF360: Did Guillermo Rosas shoot all of the footage overseas?

Tran: Yeah, he shot all of this stuff in Thailand.

SF360: I heard you guys met under interesting circumstances.

Tran: We met when he came to UCLA with Julian Schnabel to talk about ‘Before Night Falls.’ After he was rushing down the corridors, I chased him down and said ‘Hi, my name is Ham Tran, I’m about to shoot my thesis, and it’s going to be in Vietnam.’ And Vietnam was the word that caught his attention. because then he turned to me and said ‘Vietnam! I was there 10 years ago. I would really like to go back.’ So he gave me his number in Mexico and said ‘Give me a call when you’re ready with the script and everything.’ So I did, and I was really persistent, and finally, the schedule worked out. He was able to go back to Vietnam and shoot.

SF360: Somebody else is listed as shooting some of the film. Julie Kirkwood.

Tran: She was the DP who shot all of the stuff in America. We had shot over our schedule, and by the time we came back, Memo had to shoot a film in Mexico.

SF360: Did she set up to replicate what Guillermo had shot? What was the guidance you gave her as far as coming up with a look?

Tran: When I had spoken with Memo, it was always planned that America was going to look 100 percent different. I told Memo that I wanted America to look flat and ugly. More than anything, I wanted that aged look to it. That’s what I was talking to Julie about. And she suggested this more old-photo look to it. That was music to my ears, because my production company is Old-Photo Films. I was like, perfect. I think we’re on the same wavelength here.

SF360: Still, with all these production break-downs, was there ever a time you considered giving up?

Tran: There was actually one day that I wanted to walk away. I felt that I couldn’t do it anymore. And that was right after the storm sequence. We needed special effects and rain machines. Every special effect shot was $12,000-$20,000 for a five- or ten-second sequence. We just didn’t have that money. So I took all the pages of the storm and just trashed them. It was just by blind luck that when we were prepping to do another scene, I saw this storm cloud coming. I just asked everybody ‘Hey, guys. Can you just trust me, and we will just wing it?’ And they said ‘OK, fine. What do you need?’ I was on the boat with the actors, and I had to hide in the engine compartment and shout out directions. I told Memo, ‘Whatever you do, just keep the cameras rolling.’ At the end, I turned to Memo and asked, ‘Did we get it?’ He misread my face and thought I was getting a kick out of it. To me, it was just sheer exhaustion. When we all got back into the boat, I apologized to every single extra. Those guys really suffered.

I thought that I didn’t know how to direct this film anymore. Basically it’s a fine line between making your actors suffer in order to get the film, and weighing that against making a film about people who have suffered through this terrible ordeal on the boat. I was about to walk away from the whole thing, but my production designer told me, ‘Everybody knows what they signed on for, and they’re doing this because they’re passionate about it. They’re still here.’

SF360: This was in Thailand?

Tran: In Thailand. Pretty much everything that takes place in Vietnam was shot in Thailand.

SF360: How long did that shoot go for?

Tran: In total, seven and a half weeks.

SF360: And the United States shoot, how long did that go on for?

Tran: The States was two and a half weeks. It was a ten week shoot.

SF360: That’s pretty quick!

Tran: I don’t know how we were able to do it. Actually, when people ask me how we were able to make this film, I would sincerely have to look at them and say, ‘I don’t know how.’(Tran laughs) But somehow it got done.

Bay Area filmmaker Thomas Logoreci produced and edited Caveh Zahedi’s IFC Films release “I Am A Sex Addict” which opens April 5th at the Balboa.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, directors, filmmakers, independent film, q&a

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"Sentenced Home" sees three Cambodian Americans being exiled

Spencer Nakasako’s seminal 1995 video-diary-style documentary, “a.k.a. Don Bonus,” ends on a triumphant note. Don, a Cambodian refugee teenager also known as Sokly Ny, makes his way past life in the projects, burglaries, bureaucracies, multiple bus rides to school, English tests, as well as memories of what Vietnam War did to his family, and graduates into the next stage of his life in an uncertain urban America. It’s a miracle he survived. Eleven years later, filmmakers Nicole Newnham and David Grabias catch up with Cambodian immigrants who grew up not too differently from Ny in another urban center of the West Coast, but, instead of graduating into the next stage, find themselves being led back to their troubled pasts.

“Sentenced Home” follows three Cambodian American men from Seattle who broke the law in their late teens, served time in prison, and thought they were getting on with their lives – until they received letters from the government informing them that, because of their criminal records, and in spite of time served, they would soon be deported back to Cambodia. I got to speak with Grabias, Newnham, and Many Uch, the only one of the three Cambodian men who’s still waiting to be forcibly returned, at the same San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival where Nakasako’s work has found a home.

SF360: Is your father in Cambodia? Were you in touch with him growing up?

Many Uch: Yes, he’s in Cambodia, but no, we’re not in touch at all. It was a struggle growing up, why worry about your dad when you have your mom…? I know where he lives at all time, but I choose not to talk or write to him, because he’s just my dad only by blood, not by taking care of me.

SF360: Why did you separate?

Uch: In 1979, when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia to take over the Khmer Rouge, we were forced by the Khmer Rouge to go along with them. My dad said, ‘no I wanna see the country where we’re at, see if our house still exists.’ When my dad left, probably a day or two later, the Vietnamese army just pushed the Khmer Rouge army. The Khmer Rouge army kidnapped these hundreds of people into the jungle. My mom thought my dad died; my dad thought my mom died, because there was not any contact. Because at that time, we were stuck in the jungle after the killing field already. They didn’t want us to go to the country, because of the Vietnamese occupation… People were dying. The army got smaller and smaller. We spent so many months, most of a year in the jungle with no food. The army was just depleted, so few were able to escape. Most were captives. That’s how we ended up in a refugee camp.

SF360: Where did you first land here?

Uch: It was in Richmond, Virginia. We lived there for almost a year. We had relatives in Seattle, so we decided to get on the Greyhound and move there.

SF360: After the screening during the Q&A, you said your plan is to not have a plan, in terms of going back to Cambodia, if you are eventually deported.

Uch: I have to see what it’s like by being over there. What’s the best thing for me? I go there and see what’s wrong with the country and have a hand in it? Or just be myself and take care of my business. Maybe I have to teach English. Maybe I have to teach baseball. That’s how I look at it.

SF360: What happened with the baseball team you were coaching here?

Uch: [laughs]. The second year, they imposed a three-out rule. If I throw seven bad pitches to my kids, then they’re out automatically. [Usually] if you can’t hit it, you get to walk the kid; just to teach the kids the game, not to make it competitive.

SF360: The baseball scene in movie shows you instructing the kids on taking off their hats and placing them on their chests for the US National Anthem. What are your own feelings when that song is playing?

Uch: I have to have authority over my kids, during a game, not during a game… What was going through my mind during the National Anthem was ‘Wow,’ finally, my people have a team to watch. These kids. I did it. And it’s a big accomplishment for me, my community.

SF360: How did you find your way to this story, Nicole and David?

Nicole Newnham: I was working on National Geographic show called “Skin” for PBS; it was about the science and culture of human skin. We were doing a thing about gang tattoo removal and one of the doctors we were following was donating his time for tattoo removal for some former gang members in exchange for community service. And these kids were part of the Cambodian American community in Lowell, Massachusetts, and their families were just getting [deportation] letters at the time. They’d signed this repatriation agreement and the deportations were going to start happening soon. The whole community was really upset. I happened to just be around to witness their shock, and it was compelling. It made me really intrigued. One of the community members begged me; why are you making a film about gang tattoos? Why don’t you make a film about this? Nobody seems to care about this. So I thought about it for awhile and I called David.

SF360: How many deportations of Cambodians have happened so far?

David Grabias: Many was saying 141.

Uch: I have to check on my website.

SF360: Your website deportableguy.org?

Grabias: 141 so far, and there are somewhere around 1,500 on a list to be deported. The stat is 78,000 criminal aliens are deported every year.

SF360: Can the deportable crime be as small a crime as shoplifting?

Newnham: Yeah, it can – if it’s more than once. That’s my understanding. Actually, one of the most egregious cases is this guy who was deported for public urination, because in Texas, if you’re convicted for public urination more than once, it’s considered to be a sex crime, and a sex crime is considered to be an aggravated felony, which is deportable. This guy was working on a road crew in Texas. He had the most amazing story about having come here and was pretty much abandoned by his parents, and raised himself. He was a great guy. And there was no place to pee where he was working.

SF360: How are the three young men in your film making it in Cambodia now?

Grabias: I think it’s a long process. Kim Ho went through – and still is going through -struggles in terms of coming to terms with his place there and identity there. Loeun; in some ways had the opposite experience. Leon had the support of his family and kids and wife in the states. Whereas Kim did not have that. And now, 2 and 1/2 years later, the bonds with his family are slowly becoming less tight. That’s becoming a struggle for him to maintain those relationships. On the other side, Kim Ho ended up marrying this girl in the countryside and, to some degree, embracing his life there.

Newnham: It’s like Greek exile. If you study Greek tragedy, the worst tragedy you can give is exile. Loeun is living like he’s in exile, talking to his kids everyday. It’s just too much for a human being to stand. Whereas Kim Ho Ma still has that, because he’s separated from his mother and his brother – he definitely suffers from that – but I think by getting married and starting a new life, he’s maybe got a little bit more that he can hold on to there.

SF360: Do you think there’s anything about the timing of arrival of different waves of immigrants that affected the ways different they coped, adjusted, assimilated?

Newnham: It seems to me that when Many was growing up, “gang” culture was at its zenith.

Uch: My take on it is you have this group of refugees who doesn’t speak English, in low-income housing. You get here, you get a low-wage job. You move to the projects to make it, the welfare system kicks in being in the projects. The surrounding is rough. I don’t think most of us were living a peaceful life; there’s always trouble around there. They didn’t take into consideration being traumatized by the Khmer Rouge. When you settle here, you have families to worry about in Cambodia. Are they alive or not. At the same time are you concentrated n work or raising the kids?

Grabias: Someone just sent me a study they did in Long Beach, with Cambodian refugees. Something like 75 percent of the older generation, who were adults when they arrived, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder: didn’t sleep, had nightmares, had substance abuse issues, violence issues. That obviously impacts the kids, how they’re raised. No one took that into account when they resettled the Cambodian population.

topics: asian american cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, documentary, independent film

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Star search, SFIAAFF style

A quick flip through the indices of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival nets you names like Gregg Araki, Gurinder Chadha, Fruit Chan, Chen Kaige, Stephen Chow, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Shohei Imamura, Justin Lin, Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, Nonzee Nimbutr, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike, Wayne Wang, Wong Kar Wai, Edward Yang, Zhang Yimou, and Jia Zhang-ke. Who’s next to join the canon? SF360.org checked in with the festival’s Taro Goto to get his take on who we better pay attention to now, before superstardom snatches them away.

1) Mora Mi-Ok Stephens (“Conventioneers”). Goto says Stephens just won the John Cassavetes Award at the Independent Spirit Awards, and she’s got a feature project lined up with Yun-jin Kim (“Lost”) and Billy Bob Thornton attached to it.

2) Julia Kwan (“Eve & the Fire”) Kwan’s film premiered at Toronto, won the Audience Award at Vancouver, and picked up a Special Jury Award at Sundance. According to Goto, “she’s a very very talented filmmaker from Canada,” whose short film “Three Sisters on Moon Lake” was his favorite short film from the 2002 program.

3) Tanuj Chopra (“Punching at the Sun”) – Chopra’s short film Butterfly was a favorite here in 2003, and he’s come back with a very intense New York story about a South Asian teen, explains Goto. He’s a Palo Alto native, and “Punching at the Sun” was the first South Asian American feature selected for a world premiere at Sundance.

4) Wisit Sasanatieng (“Citizen Dog”) Sasanatieng’s first feature, “Tears of the Black Tiger,” was picked up by Miramax and then shelved, but his distinctive style is in full bloom in “Citizen Dog,” says Goto. Tears was the first Thai film to screen in official selection at Cannes.

5) Zhang Lu (“Grain in Ear”) Zhang’s first feature, “Tang Poetry,” got a little bit of play at festivals, but “Grain in Ear,” Goto writes “is a minimalist masterpiece that’s getting accolades everywhere.”

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, center for asian american media, independent film

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Transnational tales stand out at this year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

It’s no surprise to encounter many movies at this year’s San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival that hail from more than one nation, such as the Cambodia/France documentary “Burnt Theatre,” the India/UK special presentation “Dreaming Lhasa” or the Thailand/USA closing night feature “Journey from the Fall”. If in the ’60s the name and money of someone like Carlo Ponti could add another European layer to what most viewers thought of as a “French” film, then today the addition of Ponti’s lire seems downright simple in comparison to the complications of a typical international production – even a modest feature from Denmark can boast a list of subsidiary countries (Switzerland, Belgium, France…) only slightly shorter than the tale of a comet.

But how often is the relationship between countries that are funding sites played out in the film itself? In the case of Zhang Lu’s “Grain in Ear,” the label of a South Korea/China co-production to some degree reflects the actual thematic contents. Composing a drama based from a newspaper account, novelist-turned-director Zhang sets out to explore the prejudices and discrimination that one South Korean single mother encounters in rural China. What he winds up with is a statement about the terrorizing qualities of a society – and a film that sympathizes with, if not endorses, terrorism as a response to them. (Think of it as a smarter, older, little-known relative of “V for Vendetta.”)

Wary as she is weary, Soon-hee (Ji Liu Lan) peddles – and pedals – kimchee for a living; she and her young son live by a railroad line, sharing a ground-level open-air apartment next to one occupied by a quartet of prostitutes. “Grain in Ear” is exquisitely photographed by Liu Yonghong, who makes wonderful use of multiple passages (doorways, windows, TV screens) within what might seem like a simple, enclosed mise en scene. The dramatic impact of Zhang’s film also stems from the subtle ways in which it observes Soon-hee’s quiet kinship with the women next door, and how that bond compares and contrasts with the view of Soon-hee favored by the men she encounters. (A Korean man is first drawn to her kimchee cart and then to her, but when his wife finds out about their trysts, he is quick to dismiss Soon-hee as a hooker, a stereotype faced by Korean women in China.)

This isn’t the only time that the protagonist of “Grain in Ear” will be treated like a straight man’s or dominant culture’s idea of a prostitute, and when she finds herself being asked to cook for the wedding of someone who has violently mistreated her, both she and Liu’s cinematography make a decisive shift from stasis into action. Relatively speaking, his deed – allowing the previously locked-in-place camera to move alongside or just behind Soon-hee as she walks away from a scorched-earth scenario – is nowhere near as severe as hers. Making creative use of the soundtrack during the closing credits, Zhang doesn’t telegraph his memorable finale, fully realizing that it supplies its own exclamation marks. Some cruel things happen on camera during “Grain in Ear,” but harsher still is the world just outside of – or around – what Zhang frames, endlessly wielding a cruel puppeteer’s influence on the film’s characters. This is the kind of melodrama – in a word, merciless – that Brecht might admire.

As another story of Korean diaspora, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s “Linda Linda Linda” couldn’t be more different from Zhang’s film. It isn’t that Japan – the only country listed as a production site here – hasn’t exerted its own imperialist will on Korea, or that Koreans living in Japan don’t face everyday alienation or discrimination, but that Yamashita has fashioned a forward-thinking fantasia of sorts in which those aspects of life are no longer dominant. He’s certainly chosen the right sub-genre to put forth such a vision – a teen rock ‘n’ roll movie, and a teen girl rock ‘n’ roll movie at that. They may be fresh from a triumphant appearance at the Castro Theatre, but the recently revived fabulous Stains had better watch out – Paran Maum are coming to town, and they’re ready to rock the Kabuki as unforgettably as Cheap Trick rocked the Budokan.

Yamashita’s also definitely chosen the right actress to break down barriers: Bae Du-na, who also stars in Park Chan-wook’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.” Going in to “Linda”, I suspected with some dread that Bae’s character might bear some mark of sexual difference (perhaps being depicted as sultrier or more experienced) in relation to her Japanese band mates, so it was a relief to discover that her exchange student, Son, is a smart goofball, more concerned with learning lyrics than enticing boys – the scene in which an admirer confesses a crush on her is priceless, primarily for Son’s nonplussed reaction.

SFIAFF Assistant Director Taro Gato has mentioned Aki Kaurismaki in relation to “Linda” – an unconventional and apt comparison, right down to both directors’ love of ramshackle music, but I’d have to say I prefer Yamashita’s new film to Kaurismaki’s oeuvre. Mainlining adrenaline from the same type of indie sources that may have inspired the fantastic sounds of Cornelius (Paran Maum’s cover of the Blue Hearts’ song that provides the film’s title is inspiring in each manifestation, from lousy practice-space lift-off to talent show climax), the director’s verite approach, in opposition to the slick phoniness of most rock movies, is whim-driven enough to make time for side characters – such as a bluesy, boozy ex-student – to show off their musical skills. Even the incidental ambient tones on the soundtrack are terrific, in tune with how sleep-deprivation almost torpedoes a budding band’s dreams of a mind-blowing stage debut.

In a discussion posted earlier this week on SF360, Goto mentions a “huge Korean fad” in Japan at the moment in relation to Yamashita’s film. Certainly, being considered hip or stylish isn’t necessarily an exemption from discrimination – in the future or the present – but “Linda”‘s approach to the Korean experience in Japan, and a Japanese view of one particular Korean, is subtle and uplifting, an about face from the almost preordained tragedy of the Korean-Chinese relations in Zhang’s “Grain in Ear.”

Earlier during the same interview, SFIAAFF Director Chi-hui Yang refers to Taiwan as “a place where people are still shopping for identity,” an observation that ricochets interestingly off of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s contribution to the fest, “Cafe Lumiere,” which finds the director – no slouch in terms of establishing his own auteurist identity – paying homage to Yasujiro Ozu through a partial appropriation of Ozu’s minimalist understatement. On the surface, a link between Hou and Ozu might seem odd, but Hou models a Tokyo-set Tokyo Story update quite effortlessly, perhaps too easily for passive viewers’ tastes. This 2004 Japanese production also resembles a “typical” contemporary Japanese film, from its cinematography – a gray, leached sunlit look more akin to Hirokazu Kore-eda than the bleeding nightclub colors of Hou’s previous film “Millennium Mambo” – on through to its use of a J-pop song (fitting rather than grating, and written and performed by the film’s star, Yo Hitoto) during the closing credits.

Commissioned by Ozu’s studio Shochiku to create a centenary tribute to the director, Hou presents a tiny reversal of this project within the plot of “Café Lumiere”: journalist Yoko (Hitoto) researches and investigates the life of Chinese composer Jiang Wenye, who was schooled in Japan. This undertaking is hardly the focus of Hou’s comparatively long-take and -distance approach to the Ozu-like story of a young woman faced with decisions related to tradition and family, and it isn’t connected to Hou’s revision of Ozu’s train sightings. This may be falling prey to oversimplification, but the train-obsessed Hajime (Tadanobu Asano, uniquely superb as always in fusing strength and tenderness) could be a corollary for Hou’s directorial inspiration, while Yoko’s absent Taiwanese boyfriend might be seen as a Hou surrogate, or at least the bridge – or train track? – by which Hou connects his own contemporary experience to the present-day Japan of Yoko and the past Japan recorded by Ozu.

Such musings ultimately are pointless in the face of “Cafe Lumiere”‘s observational delicacy, which finds humor and pathos in the quiet resignation of Hajime about his feelings for a willfully oblivious Yoko, and the highly individual discomfort of Yoko’s parents when they are faced with the news of her incipient pregnancy. (Once again, Yoko uses obliviousness to get what she wants.) Quiet and near-suburban, the Tokyo that Hou uncovers is different from the one dominated by disused prefectures that can be found in recent films by Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Akihiko Shiota – not to mention the glossy neon techno-land favored by Sofia Coppola and commercials. Hou’s project could be seen as a 21st-century version of a European art house director’s ’60s-era flirtation with Hollywood, an in this case, an outsider’s view is more compelling and revealing than heavy-handed.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, center for asian american media, independent film

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