The 29th San Francisco
Asian American Film Festival -- opening tonight at the Castro with the premiere
of British director Andy De Emmony’s coming-of-age story, West Is West, (followed
by a gala party at the Asian Art Museum) -- runs through Sunday, March 20th
at the Castro, the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas and the Viz in San Francisco,
Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (PFA) and the Camera Cinemas in San Jose. This
year the festival – catering to both fractured attention spans and an explosion
of digital filmmaking -- offers more new media, an emphasis on South Asian
filmmakers, expanded panels, cutting edge Asian American pop music groups and
array of short films for all persuasions.
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Dog Sweat: Hossein Keshavarz’s provocative and
secretly filmed portraits of young hip Iranians flying under the Mullah’s radar
opens with buddies cracking wise about the execution of a notorious liquor
dealer and simultaneous shortage of Johnny Walker Black Label. It’s quickly
apparent that keeping up with the Facebook crowd, while avoiding the religious
Gestapo can drive the most devote to drink or worse, humiliating social
compromises. Queer lovers Hooshang (Rahim Zamani) and Hooman (Bagher Forohar)
seemingly have their very discrete affair in a Tehran comfort zone until Hooman
bows to his mom’s nagging about getting into an arranged marriage. There’s
poignant moment when the now defunct male couple shamefully bump into each
other at a public cruise park and Hooshang screws up the courage to walk away
from the relationship with at least his pride intact. (Kabuki/3-12 &
Viz/3-16)
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Tales of the Waria: Kathy Huang’s intimate doc
explores this vibrant Muslim society’s surprising tolerance for biological men
who conduct their daily lives as women – including having de facto marriages
with straight men – while expressing no desire to have surgery. Suharni – an
HIV positive, former sex worker – has a solid relationship but feels a need to
leave the nest to make extra cash in the tourist haunts of Bali. The aging Mami
Ria gets a nip and tuck in a desperate attempt to hold on to her status as
number two wife of a cop. The youthful Agus – who abandoned cross-dressing for
a traditional marriage – has lately felt more of a need to hang with his old waria
friends. While beauty pageant trainer Tiara considers her female ways to be
part of god’s plan. It’s clear that while these “lady men” have avoided the
deadly perils of a queer identity in a Muslim society, the aging process
produces new challenges for which there are few comfortable answers.
(Viz/3-13 & Kabuki/3-15)
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The Taqwacores: Eyad Zahra’s subversive youth comedy
opens as a clean cut college kid, Yusef (the ruggedly handsome Bobby Naden),
enters what he expects to be a proper Muslim frat house. All bets are off as Yusef
discovers that his new housemates are each following their own inner Koran – a burqa-wearing
punk feminist literally crosses out offending passages (like the one commanding
a husband to physically punish a wife) – a half naked punk who works at the
local liquor bar, a Mohawk attired musician who considers Johnny Cash to be his
ultimate higher authority and a fem boy from San Francisco whose strict parents
have sent him to this East Coast wasteland in order to extract him from a hyper
gay scene. Based on a popular novel that has inspired a fledgling Muslim punk
scene, The Taqwacores climaxes in a punk music bash where there just
might be a fatwah in each house member’s future. (Clay/3-12 &
PFA/3-18)
Tainted Love: This erotically charged shorts program
includes the San Francisco originating Bus Pass, Narissa Lee’s depiction
of how girls meet on public transport.
(Viz/3-12 & Kabuki/3-17)
Surrogate Valentine: Dave Boyle’s slapdash road
comedy (San Francisco’s closing night feature) has an Asian-American folk
rocker struggling to adjust to having a white bread soap opera actor riding
shotgun to his gigs so that actor can learn to impersonate him for a low budget
bio-pic. (Kabuki/3-17 & Camera/3-20)
Clash: A slickly made Vietnamese based martial arts
thriller with a male/female fighting team. (Centerpiece film/Castro/3-13)
One Voice: A heartfelt examination of the lives of
ethnically Hawaiian high school students who are preparing for an island wide
choral competition.
A nice moment has young parents hoping their kids get a
chance to affirm their Hawaiian roots in a way that was denied them in their
day.
(Clay/3-13 & Kabuki/3-16 & Camera/3-20)
One Kine Day: Chuck Mitsui shows us his downwardly
mobile working class slice of Hawaii through the eyes of a teen slacker boy, Ralsto
(the lanky, doe-eyed hottie Ryan Greer). Beginning with what this sublimely
un-ambitious punk hopes will be just another day at his favorite skate park,
Mitsui sets up a low-key but pitiless series of pratfalls – his girlfriend’s
pregnant, mom’s nagging him to work for the post office, his friends are
parasite losers or worse – which put this most passive of protagonists to the
test.
(Kabuli/3-11 & Viz/3-14)
The Festival’s doubleheader Spotlight on British auteur Gurinder
Chadha kicks off with her 2002 soccer girl classic Bend It Like Beckham.
Combining a look at the cultural pressures a sports loving non-traditional
daughter can place on the mores, wedding plans and sanity of a traditional
English based Indian clan, with a scintillating look at how women athletes are
changing the face of the world’s most popular team sport, Chadha provides
breathtaking action, a witty script and perhaps the most sympathetic nice guy
role ever essayed by the ferociously beautiful Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
(Clay/3-13 & PFA 3-19)
It’s A Wonderful Afterlife: Chadra’s latest -- an
English language murder mystery/comedy that finds residents of a once calm
suburb dropping dead at the hands of cunning culinary killer --
features the talented Jimi Mistry. (Clay/3-12 &
Camera/3-20)
M/F Remix: Jy-Ah Min reboots Goddard’s mid-60’s
classic Masculine-Feminine – incorporating substantial gulps of
Jean-Pierre Leaud and Chantal Goya debating the sexual rules of the road, circa
1966 – mashed up against male and female roommates figuring out what has
changed. The new segments have their charm but are sometimes labored, proving
once again that it’s hard to improve on a masterpiece.
(Viz/3-12 & Kabuki/3-15 & PFA/3-16)
Resident Alien: Ross Tuttle demonstrates the painful
limbo experienced by hundreds of Cambodian young people who once enjoyed US
residency. Particularly moving is the story of the muscular, tattooed former
gang banger KK, who deported from his Long Beach, California home (and
separated from his elderly parents and young son), now finds himself teaching
break dancing to a houseful of Cambodian street orphans.
(Kabuki/3-12 & Viz/3-15)
Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words: Yunah Hong
surveys the 58 film career of this once popular Chinese American actress and
chanteuse.
The filmmaker dramatizes Wong’s letters to demonstrate how
her attempt to break through Hollywood’s color bar casts new light on a turbulent
and shameful chapter of this country’s entertainment history.
(Kabuki/3-12 & 3-16 & PFA/3-13)
Made in India: When an infertile Texas couple decide to
take the plunge and seek a lower cost Indian sexual surrogate to bear their
desperately desired first child they have no idea that their plan could run
seriously amuck and they might not be allowed to take their baby (or babies)
home to San Antonio. Rebecca Haimowitz and Vaishali Sinha provide a
blow-by-blow account of the long and winding road that takes Lisa and Brian
Switzer to a Mumbai delivery room – with a detour for a shot on Oprah –
exploring the uncharted legal and financial morass that can make both parents
and surrogates subject to the greed of unscrupulous surrogacy middlemen, as
well as the shifting debate on the morality and ethics of the surrogate
process. (Kabuki/3-13 & 3-16 & Camera/3-19)