Q&A

Borshay Liem’s Double Exposure of Korean Adoptions

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

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

Gazing West with 'Sweetgrass'

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

Q&A

Sid Ganis on Hollywood South and North

From his modest start as a staff writer at 20th Century Fox, Sid Ganis has built an uncommonly long and successful career in Hollywood. The well-liked Brooklyn native gravitated to marketing and publicity, eventually working his way up to the Warner Bros. executive suite in 1977. At George Lucas’s behest, he moved to the Bay Area to spearhead Lucasfilm’s marketing of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983) and the first two Indiana Jones movies. Ganis returned to L.A. to assume the presidency of the Paramount Motion Picture Group, and subsequently joined Columbia’s senior management team before striking out on his own as a producer. His credits include the Adam Sandler flicks Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds, and Akeelah and the Bee with his wife Nancy Hult Ganis, a former journalist and documentary filmmaker. As a sign of his respect in the industry, Ganis served four terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science from 2005 through 2009. Ganis divides his time between Southern California and the Bay Area, where he sits on the boards of the San Francisco Film Society and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. We spoke on the phone in mid-December.

topics: bay area, hollywood, san francisco film society, world cinema

Take Two

Beyond 'Berlin,' Eggers Brings out New German Gems

The moving arrow anoints a new hot spot of contemporary cinema every few years, and then moves on. In the last two decades, professional and amateur trendspotters have singled out Hong Kong, Iran, South Korea, Argentina, Japan (for J-horror, mostly), Romania and Israel. The magic number seems to be three; that is, three different (and preferably young) directors garnering major festival prizes in the same year denotes a wave.

That’s as likely an explanation as any for why Germany never makes the cool list, despite a steady stream of topnotch films.

topics: european film, international film, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest at 20

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cinequest was the scrappy upstart amongst Bay Area film festivals? Apparently not: This year finds San Jose’s annual cinematic blowout entering its third decade.

February may be the shortest month, but Cinequest is going longer nonetheless, at least for this 20th anniversary annum: The 2010 fest runs nearly two weeks, Feb. 23 through March 7, once again at venues all within three blocks’ walking distance in downtown SJ. (For those with a car-free carbon imprint, they’re about 20 minutes’ walk from CalTrain.)

As ever, the primary Cinequest mix is equal-parts heavy on both world premieres (mostly U.S. indies) and recent festival faves from around the world.

topics: activism, actors, audiences, bay area, genre films, how-to, independent film, technology, world cinema

Report

Stephen Talbot tunes in to world music

Should Stephen Talbot be worried? He left PBS’s Frontline World, where he was a series editor and senior producer, to form Talbot Players and create and develop original media properties, including a new globe-trotting television series about world music dubbed Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders. For Talbot, it’s the kind of fantasy project he has been wanting to do for a long time. When we sat down in North Beach’s Cafe Zoetrope recently to discuss the project, Talbot had a pilot just about wrapped up and was getting ready to submit it to the heads at PBS.

topics: bay area, documentary, music, public television, tv, world cinema