In Production

Local makers line up next shot after SFIFF

A film festival can be a launching pad for a brand new release, a gratifying encounter with a live audience on the way to a national TV broadcast, a hometown celebration or just another stop on the circuit. The 2009 SFIFF has been all that and more for the numerous Bay Area filmmakers with feature-length works in the program, and who are already plotting their next moves.

The crowd-pleasing opening night film, La Mission, is slated to screen May 30 and 31 in the Seattle International Film Festival. Beyond that, director Peter Bratt and company wait to hear from other fests while they maintain ongoing negotiations for distribution that commenced with the film’s Sundance premiere.

topics: actors, american indian film, arab cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, digital filmmaking, distribution, diy, documentary, drama, film festivals, latin american cinema, san francisco international film festival, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki

Platform

SFIFF52: Yun Suh finds revolution in a Jerusalem watering hole

Sneaking through a hole in the border fence between Israel and Palestine may seem like a high-risk way to have a nightlife, but for Boody, a young man living in Palestine, it’s the only way to get to Shushan, Jerusalem’s lone gay bar. City of Borders, the debut film by Bay Area filmmaker Yun Suh, follows several characters who have found a second home at the bar. The film testifies to the intolerance that members of the LGBTQ community face in addition to all of the other walls, physical and social, separating people in the region. City of Borders screens in the Documentary Competition at the "San Francisco International Film Festival": (Sun., April 26, 2 p.m., PFA, Thurs., April 30, 9:30, Mon., May 4, 9:15 and Wed., May 6, 12:15, Sundance Kabuki). Yun Suh answered my questions over e-mail during her time off of her day job, as an assignment editor for KRON.

[SF360.org editor’s note: This is part of a series of Q&As with local Bay Area filmmakers whose work is screening the SFIFF52.]

topics: center for asian american media, diy, documentary, film arts foundation, funding, gay lesbian cinema, political film, san francisco international film festival, youth

Critic's Notebook

Connecting here and there at the 27th SFIAAFF

The 27th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival was atwitter with talk of interactivity. Center for Asian American Media Executive Director Stephen Gong was shooting the opening night crowd at the Castro with his Flip video camera, encouraging festival-goers to participate in the Best Fest digital photo and video competitions, before he even started in on his welcoming remarks. It was funny to routinely hear plugs throughout the festival for participating in up-to-the-minute virtual attendance in the same breath that audience members were reminded to not text during the screening. To some extent all the Web 2.0 hype seemed to point to the interesting crossroads SFIAFF finds itself at.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, sf international asian american film festival, world cinema

Experience

Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a cinema of disaster

The wind is always blowing in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films. Like the torrential rain of so many horror films that is only a road-sign for the creepy old house up ahead, the gusts that whip and toss Kurosawa’s characters are the sighs of a world in flux. Though his dizzyingly prolific filmography includes a wide cross section of genres—police procedural, family melodrama, yakuza revenge tale, supernatural thriller—the central drama of most Kurosawa films can be boiled down this: the world is changing—or has changed—and the measure of each character is how successfully or unsuccessfully they can adjust to the new parameters unfolding before them.

It is a simple conflict, in a way, but the choices and outcomes that face Kurosawa’s characters—however melodramatic or fantastic—are no less resonant with our own current political and economic climate of crisis. The choice of Kurosawa as the focus of a special retrospective by the S.F. International Asian American Film Festival, opening Thursday, is a timely one.

topics: actors, awards, bay area, center for asian american media, curators, drama, japanese cinema, sf international asian american film festival, world cinema

Platform

The buzz on H.P. Mendoza's "Fruit Fly"

H.P. Mendoza launched his career with an unlikely topic for a movie musical—a group of twentysomethings trying to escape the cemetery capital of the world. Perhaps equally surprising is the fact that Colma: The Musical, which he composed, wrote and co-starred, became a surprise indie hit in 2006. Now, he’s back with another musical, Fruit Fly, this time as a director and composer of the film’s 19 original songs. Mendoza’s twin root systems in music and film are inseparable and have served him well. Shot in HD over a 20-day period in the Castro and Mission neighborhoods Fruit Fly reunites Mendoza with Colma vets—cinematographer Richard Wong and leading songstress, L.A. Renigen. Renigen plays Bethesda, a Filipina performance artist who searches for her birth parents, tries to get her career off the ground and, as Mendoza once did, lives in a San Francisco artist commune, whose tenants are a rainbow coalition of ethnicity and sexual orientation. Mendoza is currently working on a non-musical: a dark comedy about Proposition 8. Fruit Fly, which was funded by the Center for Asian American Media, has its world premiere March 15 at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

topics: actors, bay area, center for asian american media, independent film, music, musicals, sf international asian american film festival

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

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