San Francisco Asian Film Festival
* Check out the 2013 edition of the SF international Asian American film festival *
The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) unleashes more than 100 films and videos from around the world on the Bay Area from March 8-18, 2012, including an interactive web series portraying singing and dancing prisoners in the Philippines, a documentary about young Hmong breakdancers in the US, a raunchy and funny new chick flick and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, about the 2011 earthquake and disaster in Japan.
Here are some highlights of the biggest festival in North America of Asian and Asian American films, which is 30 years old, opens in San Francisco and wraps in San Jose:
-- OPENING NIGHT - MARCH 8
White Frog reveals the cracks in a seemingly ideal family after a tragedy hits. The star-studded cast includes Joan Chen, B.D. Wong, Harry Shum, Jr. (Glee) and Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga), who plays a son with Asperger’s syndrome. Following the world premiere at the Castro Theatre, there is a Q&A session with the cast and director Quentin Lee, and then a gala party at the Asian Art Museum.
-- HAWAII UKULELE MAESTRO JAKE SHIMABUKURO - MARCH 14
Called the “Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele,” Shimabukuro performs and talks about his life, a supplement to the world premiere of a documentary about him. The unassuming, internationally famed musician took up ukulele as a child to help cope with his parents’ divorce.
-- SPOTLIGHT ON JOAN CHEN
Chen, 50, is best known for her roles in the Oscar best-picture winner The Last Emperor (1987) and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks television series.
Winning China’s award for best actress when she was only 19, the Shanghai native moved to the US soon afterward. For her debut as a director, she picked a doozy: a wrenching, politically sensitive story (about a girl’s harrowing existence when she’s sent to the hinterlands and abused during the Cultural Revolution) that Chen filmed in China illegally. Chen will talk about her film after the March 9 screening of Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl(1998).
A San Francisco resident, Chen has worked steadily in both Hollywood movies and international productions, such as Lust, Caution, Mao’s Last Dancer, Heaven and Earth, The Home Song Stories and 24 City. The elegant actress is featured in two festival films, the opener White Frog (in which Chen is a model wife and mother; see above), and Saving Face (2004), the groundbreaking Asian American comedy which has her playing a traditional-minded Chinese widow, who, at age 48, becomes pregnant.
-- PRISON DANCER
It’s a sign of the times that a YouTube series that grew out of a YouTube video gone viral is the closing gala presentation of the SFIAAFF.
Dancing Inmates of Cebu, a music video of inmates at a Philippines maximum-security prison gyrating to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, went viral in 2009. Prison Dancer is a fictional rendition of some of the dancing prisoners in the YouTube video, and is described as a “mockumentary, musical and web series combined.” The interactive web series consists of a dozen episodes that are being released sequentially during the spring on a YouTube channel (the first episode was launched on March 6). At its official world premiere, on March 15 at SIAAFF, the screening of the series will be accompanied by on-stage dancing by some of the cast. The audience will be roused to participate, too.
-- SAN FRANCISCO ON THE BIG SCREEN
Scenes and neighborhoods in several SFIAAFF selections might look familiar to you—because they are. Films that were shot at least partially in San Francisco and the Bay Area include:
Feature–length
Shorts
-- OTHER NOTABLE FILMS
SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
March 8-15, 2012 at various venues in San Francisco and Berkeley; March 16-18 at venues in Berkeley and San Jose.
Ticket prices vary.
The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) unleashes more than 100 films and videos from around the world on the Bay Area from March 8-18, 2012, including an interactive web series portraying singing and dancing prisoners in the Philippines, a documentary about young Hmong breakdancers in the US, a raunchy and funny new chick flick and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, about the 2011 earthquake and disaster in Japan.
Here are some highlights of the biggest festival in North America of Asian and Asian American films, which is 30 years old, opens in San Francisco and wraps in San Jose:
-- OPENING NIGHT - MARCH 8
White Frog reveals the cracks in a seemingly ideal family after a tragedy hits. The star-studded cast includes Joan Chen, B.D. Wong, Harry Shum, Jr. (Glee) and Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga), who plays a son with Asperger’s syndrome. Following the world premiere at the Castro Theatre, there is a Q&A session with the cast and director Quentin Lee, and then a gala party at the Asian Art Museum.
-- HAWAII UKULELE MAESTRO JAKE SHIMABUKURO - MARCH 14
Called the “Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele,” Shimabukuro performs and talks about his life, a supplement to the world premiere of a documentary about him. The unassuming, internationally famed musician took up ukulele as a child to help cope with his parents’ divorce.
-- SPOTLIGHT ON JOAN CHEN
Chen, 50, is best known for her roles in the Oscar best-picture winner The Last Emperor (1987) and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks television series.
Winning China’s award for best actress when she was only 19, the Shanghai native moved to the US soon afterward. For her debut as a director, she picked a doozy: a wrenching, politically sensitive story (about a girl’s harrowing existence when she’s sent to the hinterlands and abused during the Cultural Revolution) that Chen filmed in China illegally. Chen will talk about her film after the March 9 screening of Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl(1998).
A San Francisco resident, Chen has worked steadily in both Hollywood movies and international productions, such as Lust, Caution, Mao’s Last Dancer, Heaven and Earth, The Home Song Stories and 24 City. The elegant actress is featured in two festival films, the opener White Frog (in which Chen is a model wife and mother; see above), and Saving Face (2004), the groundbreaking Asian American comedy which has her playing a traditional-minded Chinese widow, who, at age 48, becomes pregnant.
-- PRISON DANCER
It’s a sign of the times that a YouTube series that grew out of a YouTube video gone viral is the closing gala presentation of the SFIAAFF.
Dancing Inmates of Cebu, a music video of inmates at a Philippines maximum-security prison gyrating to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, went viral in 2009. Prison Dancer is a fictional rendition of some of the dancing prisoners in the YouTube video, and is described as a “mockumentary, musical and web series combined.” The interactive web series consists of a dozen episodes that are being released sequentially during the spring on a YouTube channel (the first episode was launched on March 6). At its official world premiere, on March 15 at SIAAFF, the screening of the series will be accompanied by on-stage dancing by some of the cast. The audience will be roused to participate, too.
-- SAN FRANCISCO ON THE BIG SCREEN
Scenes and neighborhoods in several SFIAAFF selections might look familiar to you—because they are. Films that were shot at least partially in San Francisco and the Bay Area include:
Feature–length
- I Am a Ghost
- Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Kind (the documentary’s diminutive, 98-year-old star, the first and only woman to hold the highest black belt in judo, lives and practices in San Francisco).
- Salad Days
- Surrogate Valentine 2 (also features San Francisco musicians).
- Yes, We’re Open
Shorts
- Lady Razorbacks (documentary about an East Palo Alto rugby team)
- Making Noise in Silence (documentary about the California School for the Deaf in Fremont)
- Raymond
- Shangri-la (documentary about a Tibetan monk living in a San Jose suburb)
-- OTHER NOTABLE FILMS
- Abu, Son of Adam: India’s entry to the 2012 Academy Awards competition, about an elderly Muslim couple determined to make the pilgrimage to Mecca.
- 11 Flowers: The latest film from director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle) is about a boy in southwest China coming of age during the end of the Cultural Revolution.
- The Front Line: A piercing portrayal of the Korean War; South Korea’s best-picture winner and its entry for Best Foreign Language Film of the 2012 Academy Awards.
- Night Market Hero: A musical romp and homage to Taiwan’s mouth-watering night food stalls.
- No Look Pass: Think Linsanity with even more racial and social complications and implications. A Harvard basketball star is the daughter of Burmese immigrants and is a lesbian. After graduation, she moves to Germany to play basketball, where her girlfriend serves in the US military.
- There Once Was An Island: For centuries the Taku have lived on an isolated, tiny island off of Papua New Guinea, which is now regularly flooded because of global warming. In this documentary, families have to decide whether to flee their precarious situation or stay and die with the island.
SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL
March 8-15, 2012 at various venues in San Francisco and Berkeley; March 16-18 at venues in Berkeley and San Jose.
Ticket prices vary.
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