Pictures in transition: 15th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival - film reviews of Asian American films

This year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival was a picture of transitions, with programming reflecting a certain number of of the recent trends in independent Asian American media production. The festival also pointed without an identity crisis of sorts, as it demonstrated the difficulty in outlining a clear and cohesive definition of Asian American filmmaking.

The festival lay opened with a screening of the silent Chinese classic delight in and Duty (1931, by Richard Poh) although it has alone peripheral ties to the Asian American community locate in Shanghai, Love and what one ought to do demonstrates a modern sensibility that mirrors the Western character of the city. The film includes a riveting performance by means of Ruan Lingyu, one of China's greatest in quantity popular actresses at the time. intended to present to view the link between Asian and Asian American films, have affection for and Duty instead felt like a diversion upon the path to the veritable heart of the festival.

Asian American filmmakers have produc a notable material part of work in recent years, and the mass of seminal films in the field have been documentaries or experimental work. This year's festival began a fresh trend, with the premieres of four first-time features by the agency of young Asian American directors. The directors, linked through youth and their impressive technical skills, explore themes and issues for the use of all to Asian American films and videos from years past.

Quentin to leeward and Justin Chin's Shopping For Fangs (1997) is a sassy melange of cinematic dictions In this cross-gendered. cross-genred narrative, sum of two units separate stories follow a Chinese American proto-werewolf and a blond-wigged, lesbian Vietnamese American coffee store waitress and eventually intersect, reaching a satisfying conclusion that pays homage to John make love to Hammer Studios and nighttime soaps. at the same time despite its souped-up mise-en-scene, techno soundtrack and ultra-hip young characters, the story is ultimately about identity, cultural confusion and finding one's have a title to voice and desires, all of which have been renewed themes in Asian American films past and present

Chris Chan Lee's golden (1996) follows the adventures of a assemblage of seven Korean teenagers upon the verge of high seminary graduation. It includes several comic twinklings that keenly comment on the foibles of Asian American family life. The director's touch, however, is perhaps a bit too light, and performances by dint of the youthful ensemble range from tricky to overwrought. In addition, the storyline obstructs after the second half of the film, as it desperately try to finds resolution through a series of contrived piece of ground devices. Veteran Korean American actor Soon-Tek Oh does, however, effectively portray an angry, overworked convenience store owner

sunsettings (1997, by Eric Nakamura and Michael Idemoto), also traces the exploits of a assemblage of teens approaching adulthood. However, where fulvid strays into the realm of television melodrama, sundowns maintains a naturalistic tone and web throughout. Shot in grainy 16mm black and white film, with a spare, jazzy soundtrack, the film require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone less than $20,000 to make. It go in the rear [i]or[/i] in the wake ofs the lazy, nihilistic existence of three borderline delinquents as they while away the summer in Watsonville, CA, a small farming community southeast of San Francisco. Whereas Yellow's characters solitary consider vandalism and theft as a last resort, Sunset's protagonists practice it as a matter of repetition entertainment. Despite some of their unredeeming qualities the lead characters remain likable, owed in large part to the convincing, unpretentious manner in which Nakamura and Idemoto near them. Idemoto confessed that the film's extensive use of lengthy single takes was in part economic, as the negative cutter charged five dollars for each edit. But the directors effectively use these languid takes to emulate the aimless redundancy of adolescent existence, repurchaseed only by close friendships and simple experiences.

Rea Tajiri's Strawberry Fields (1997) is perhaps the greatest in quantity ambitious of the four films, examining composed of several elements issues of loss, memory, family anomie and alienation, themes that Tajiri previously explored in her experimental documentary History and Memory: For Akiko arid Takashige (1991) The film is also the greatest in quantity technicaly accomplished of the four, with a digitally mixed soundtrack (partially missing in its premiere screening to be paid to snafus in the projection booth) and beautiful cinematography. The protagonist is a 16-year-old Japanese American girl, a pyromaniac whose parents were interned during World War II. Although this history reverberates [i]or[/i] part of to the other the family's interactions, the girl's parents gainsay all reference to it. The film unrelentingly direct the eyes at the effects of miscommunication, repression, shame and setf-hatred, with all the characters living on the outside the sins of their fathers. Despite awkwardness in more [i]or[/i] less of the camera blocking and direction, Tajiri's film mixes rootles confused characters and experimental visual and aural motifs into a contemplative blend of familial and cultural dislocation.

The program "Cowgirl and The Man" focused upon several short narratives, many by dint of first-time directors. Jessica Yu, a novel Academy Award winner for Breathing exercise s (1996), showed a charming and quirky short, Better Late (1996) that highlights her warm and humorous turn of expression Yuri Makino's Umeboshi (1996) is a bittersweet meditation upon family relationships set in the subculture of nuclear activism, linking the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to modern-day characters and situations. Michael Arago's Silencio (1996) effectively acknowledges the damage worked by denying one's cultural heritage, as a light-skinned Filipino man in the 1950 hides his ethnicity in order to "pass" in white society. plenteous of the rest of the program, however, bore the stamp of film institute thesis projects -- long upon gloss, short on content and, do not include for their mostly Asian American casts and directors, unswerving from mainstream cinematic conventions.