Singaporean director Anthony Chen is riding quite the wave of success with his feature debut, Ilo Ilo. The film won the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2013 and garnered many more accolades and awards following its smashing premiere. The film follows a strained Singaporean family whose relationship is stretched further when they must adapt to a new Filipino domestic helper named Teresa joining their household. Teresa develops a close bond with Jiale, the young boy she cares for daily.

We spoke to Chen at CAAMFest 2014 about why it took him so long to make his first feature, growing up with a domestic helper, the film’s success, his wife saying he’s difficult to live with, his stubbornness making him a better director, and more.

You won the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2013, which is a big deal for a Singaporean film.
Anthony: It was a big step for Singaporean cinema. Camera d’Or is a prestigious prize, and it’s the first time a Singaporean feature film has won an award at Cannes. I’ve had a very good outing each time I’ve been to Cannes. In 2007, I had a short film in competition, and it became the first Singaporean film to win an award at Cannes. In a way, I think Cannes has been very, very special for me. Cannes probably gave my my career as a filmmaker.

You made ten short films before making this feature.
Anthony: Yes, ten shorts. I’ve made a lot. My first short was made in 2004 when I was 19-20. It was my graduation film from film school. My shorts have done rather well in major festivals. Shorts have been very fundamental in shaping me as a filmmaker and honing my craft as a director. It’s given me a lot of confidence as well from one film to the next. When you get a good critique, that’s when you feel, “Perhaps I do know something about filmmaking.”

So you did shorts for about eight, nine years. Why wait so long to do your first feature?
Anthony: I didn’t feel I was ready at all. In fact, there was an opportunity in 2007 to do a film, after my short won at Cannes. Everyone told me, “Strike when the iron is hot!” That short opened a lot of doors. But I was quite young at the time. I was 23, and I didn’t feel I was ready, so instead, I went back to school in the UK and did a two-year masters in film directing. I wanted to train myself and mature much more before I was ready to take that next big step.

I imagine, with the mindset of, “Am I ready? Not yet,” you must have put a lot of pressure on yourself to make your first feature as good as it could be.
Anthony: I think it was important that mentally and spiritually I felt, “The time is now.”

My parents are from the Philippines, and my mother grew up with a domestic helper. You grew up with one as well, an experience that inspired the film.
Anthony: I think it’s something this part of the world doesn’t really get. A stranger comes into the family, working as a servant, but she very much becomes part of the family. She isn’t like an au pair who comes in during the daytime or during nights when the parents aren’t free; she literally lives with you. In Singapore, because of space constraints, the nanny usually sleeps in the same bedroom as the children. It’s a very intimate, personal connection. What’s fascinating is, the children probably have a much stronger bond with the nanny than the parents. The parents are always busy working.

Your work is very observational, and you seem to have a knack for identifying people’s behavior. Does this skill help you in everyday life to become a better functioning person in society?
Anthony: That’s a great question, but I’m pretty sure the best person to answer it is my wife! She’d probably say, “NO! He’s so difficult to live with!” [laughs] She’s always telling me: “I just don’t get it. You’re always making such delicate, sensitive films about humanity, but you’re so difficult to live with!” I’m very obstinate. I’m very stubborn. I want things my way. I think I see things. I think I’m very sensitive to people and their actions and nuances and emotions. But I’m equally as flawed as the characters in all my films. I think that’s why humanity is worth celebrating. We’re flawed. I don’t believe that just because you understand relationships that you become some kind of saintly person or something. You wish it was like that [laughs], but it’s not the case.

Does your stubbornness make you a better director?
Anthony: I guess so. I’m very obsessive-compulsive when I make my films. I grasp very tightly on what I’m working on, and until I make sense of what it’s about, I don’t let go. It’s very tense. It’s interesting. A lot of critics have told me that I have a very accurate observation of the female psyche. My wife disagrees with that as well! [laughs] “If you understand women so well, why don’t you understand me!” The truth is, because I understand her so well…whatever she wants, I don’t give. [laughs] I can be very manipulative.

You won the award for Best Film at the 50th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. I understand this is a big deal for a Singaporean film.
Anthony: The Golden Horse has a real legacy. It’s always been known as the Chinese Oscars; it’s beamed to 1 billion Chinese-speaking people all over the world. It’s crowned well known filmmakers like Ang Lee and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. For the longest time, Singapore hasn’t been on its radar. What was a real pivotal change was when our film garnered a record six major nominations and went on to win four. All of a sudden, it made Chinese audiences look at Singapore differently. We’ve been excluded for a long time because we’re an English-speaking country and a multi-racial country.

What is it about your film that’s caused it to break through these barriers?
Anthony: I think it’s the themes in the film that made something that was very culturally specific much more universal. Coming-of-age, family, economic crisis, migration; these are themes people deal with all over the world. I’m beginning to feel this because the film has had such an incredible journey since Cannes. My sense is that, what really connects the film with audiences is that there’s an honesty to the film that feels genuine and not fabricated or manipulative. There were critics telling me that, one reason the film did well at Cannes was that every other film was trying to do something, trying to show off in terms of style, cinematography, subject matter…there’s a lot of gusto. This was the only film that wasn’t trying to do any of that–it doesn’t try to be something it’s not.

You’ve lived in London for a few years now.
Anthony: I actually met my wife in London. I think I can see myself staying in London for a long, long time. It’s a very inspiring city. It makes you feel very small, because there’s so much talent all around you. Just like New York, it’s a city for the arts, with music, theater, cinema, visual arts, museums. What’s amazing is, every time you go out, you feel like there’s so much genius and talent around that whatever you achieve won’t be enough for the city.

You like that feeling.
Anthony: Yes, I do. I feel constantly challenged and put down. You have to struggle and keep going as an artist. It forces you to constantly grow and reinvent yourself. I do like that feeling. It keeps you humble.

What have you learned from Ilo Ilo as a director?
Anthony: It’s allowed me to get a grasp on the international film business. It’s very interesting that a director is talking about the business end of things, but for the first time I saw how things work. I understand how it works when a film ends up selling to different territories around the world. Making shorts for a long time, I was thinking that the short was the short, and then I went to festivals and it was over. It’s almost like I hadn’t come of age as a filmmaker, and then I realized that there is this much bigger community out there, and there’s a certain way films work.

You’ve been on an incredible streak with Ilo Ilo, touching people across the world and winning awards along the way. You were talking about the film being successful at Cannes because it doesn’t beg to be loved; you weren’t grasping at awards as you made the film because you were humble. Will it be a challenge, following the success of this film, to maintain that humility and not strive to capture that kind of notoriety again? How will you stay grounded?
Anthony: I’ve been thinking about that for a long time. My challenge on the next film is to protect my attitude and my values toward filmmaking. I have to find that very raw, undaunted passion for making films. How can I continue to be naive and stay true to myself? Now, I’ve got lots of scripts being thrown at me. The doors have opened, and there are times when I feel like, “Should I do it?” I hope that I can preserve my mentality toward filmmaking, but it really comes from here [points to chest]…from the heart. We’ve seen a lot of auteurs meander around in their careers because all of a sudden there was a lot of money and opportunities. I’m hoping that, with my second and third film, there will be the same sense of me as a filmmaker, the same directorial integrity. I think it’s very important that my films have real heart.

In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different ways, and together they venture down the rocky road toward the truth, clashing the whole way. The film also stars Teyonah Parris and Lucas Dixon.

More refined than your typical domestic drama, A Picture of  You transcends the label of “Asian Film”, portraying its protagonists as siblings, flawed souls, and emotionally textured human beings, a treasure in today’s movie industry, which typecasts Asian Americans rampantly. The film is funny, well-written, relatable, and at times gut-wrenching, and director J.P. Chan exhibits an impressive measure of finesse in his debut feature.

In Part 2 of our interview with Chan, Lucas Dixon weighs in on the film, as with us the two discuss learning that our parents were as confused as us, older folks being freed of life constraints, the film’s visual style, defining the film’s genre, the influence of I Love You Phillip Morris, and more.

Lucas, I asked the rest of the cast this question: Can you remember a time you found a picture of your parents you hadn’t seen before and how it affected you?

Lucas: Of course. Seeing my parents from their young, newlywed days is strange, like they’re complete strangers, but it’s also really sweet. Those are the kind of pictures I’ve seen of my parents.

I have this thing, like a lot of people, where it’s very difficult for me to imagine my parents as anything but responsible adults. They were kids, but I can’t wrap my head around that.

JP: That’s something I’m much more well aware of as I get older. It shatters the idea that you get to a certain point in life and you figure everything out. You just plateau, living your life as an adult. That certainly hasn’t happened for me. That point where I figure it out just always seems further and further down the road. Maybe it’ll never come. By the time my mother was the age I am now, she had been divorced, been through a bankruptcy, been through a foreclosure. She was a single, working class mom with two kids, working as a waitress to stay alive. Then, she found a new home with her new husband and us. She wasn’t even my age, and she’d done all this. She was still trying to figure herself out, also. I think we’re all winging it.

Lucas: My dad is ten years older than my mom, and he was her high school physics teacher. They got married as soon as she turned 18. I’m 28, so imagining myself marrying an 18-year-old at this point in my life is hard.

I don’t want to spoil anything for our readers, but we learn with the main characters that their mom was involved in a relationship that’s pretty progressive as far as American society is concerned. We could have learned any number of things about the mom–what compelled you to write the revelation in this way?

JP: Part of it was that I wanted them to find something about the mother that really turned their world upside-down. The last thing they’d want to learn as they’re grieving for her. There’s also a lot of comic potential involved in that. The other part of it is that I’d heard these kinds of stories from people before, how they would find polaroids of their dad in a book shelf of him with an old girlfriend or something.

Part of me wanted to write another movie about the old folks in the movie, what their life was like before she died. As I get older, I think about how much of the constraints in your life are ones you create for yourself. I was trying to envision a time where, I’m like that old guy in the street who doesn’t give a fuck about being polite in the supermarket line. He’s slightly off, but in some ways he’s uninhibited and free from all these constraints. I was envisioning this world where they had this freedom to live the life that they choose.

The aesthetic of the film doesn’t go for that antiqued, oldie style so many nostalgia indies are painted with. Your film is clean and vibrant, not golden. In the flashbacks of the mom, there’s a dark ring around the image.

JP: The idea behind that came from wanting to portray the flashbacks in a way that was very vivid, like a strong memory, and yet, you don’t know everything that happened around that memory. It’s almost a visual metaphor, how there were things left out from that memory, and the kids find out that there’s a lot they didn’t know about their mom. I think a big inspiration for that visual tool was the old Fiona Apple video for Criminal.

If I were to ask you to put this film in a genre, what would it be?

JP: Ooh…I hate the word “dramedy”. I go back and forth. Is it a drama with funny stuff, or a comedy with dramatic stuff? I think it’s more of a drama with funny stuff.

Lucas: I feel like the draw of the movie, what makes it unique, is its genre, but that genre is hard to define. There are two vastly different chapters in the movie that both feel like their own genres.

JP: I’m cutting the trailer right now, and I’m having a lot of trouble because I have no idea what part of the movie to emphasize.

How about if I put it this way: This film is for lovers of what? What kind of filmgoer would you suggest it to?

JP: It’s a smart, honest movie that doesn’t have a lot of flash to it. It’s a very adult movie, respectful of life and life’s challenges. But also, you have to be playful in life, and life can be funny. There has to be a glimmer of hope that keeps you going. My aspiration for this movie is that, when you’re feeling really terrible, you can kind of curl up with it and feel like you’re not alone.

I freaking love I Love You Phillip Morris. I feel like it’s kind of close to this film. There are so many highs and lows in that movie, with hilarious comedy and serious drama. I love it. It’s full of surprises, and I hope this movie is full of surprises as well.

Lucas: I think the modern day audience likes to know what they’re getting into; I’m going to this movie to cry, I’m going into this movie to laugh. I like art that can give me a very unexpected experience. It might be a very polarizing experience for me, where I’m grieving and then laughing the next moment. That’s the human experience.

In A Picture of You, a brother and sister (Andrew Pang and Jo Mei) return to their rural childhood home in Pennsylvania to sort through their recently deceased mother’s belongings. They discover shocking photos that change their perception of their mother (Jodi Long) entirely. The siblings process and reckon with the startling discovery in radically different ways, and together they venture down the rocky road toward the truth, clashing the whole way. The film also stars Teyonah Parris and Lucas Dixon.

More refined than your typical domestic drama, A Picture of  You transcends the label of “Asian Film”, portraying its protagonists as siblings, flawed souls, and emotionally textured human beings, a treasure in today’s movie industry, which typecasts Asian Americans rampantly. The film is funny, well-written, relatable, and at times gut-wrenching, and director J.P. Chan exhibits an impressive measure of finesse in his debut feature.

We spoke to Chan and his cast after the film’s screening at this year’s CAAMFest, discussing the personal inspirations behind the film, what it’s like to discover old pictures of your parents, CAAMFest, Asian American roles disappearing, a woman thinking the film was shot in Japan (seriously), and more.

For more info, visit apoyfilm.com. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview, coming tomorrow.

Let’s start off with the most basic question. What was the inspiration behind the film?

JP: There was a combination of inspirations for the movie. It’s emotionally based on my grieving for my mother when she passed away a few years ago and how it affected my family dynamic, especially with my brother. Also, I realized at that point that I only knew a portion of her. She was so much more than just my mom; she was someone’s wife, someone’s best friend, someone’s co-worker. There was such a fuller picture of her than I realized. Not what happens in my movie, of course, [laughs] but more than I realized.

Can you remember a time when you were rifling through old family stuff and found a picture of your parents that you’d never seen before? How did that feel?

Jodi: I found this picture of my parents sitting on a dock. My mother was spraying the water with her feet. My dad was really into her, and she looked like, “I’m not sure about this.” [laughs] They were in bathing suits in the ’40s.

Jo: My parents immigrated from China, so there’s a big divide in the pictures between when they were young in China and when they immigrated and came to the US. Their younger pictures are black and white. Any time I see pictures of them in black and white, they just look like entirely different people. I think of who they were before me, before moving their lives to the US. They were different people.

How was the screening at CAAMFest last night?

Jo: The challenge of an indie film coming to a small festival is that you’re always worried about how much outreach you can do or how much it’s going to connect with the audience. I was really happy that we filled up the theater and people stayed for the Q&A.

Jodi: I thought it was great. There wasn’t this mass exodus after the screening ended! [laughs] Everyone pretty much stayed. People were laughing and crying.

Did you get the laughs you were looking for, JP?

JP: Oh yeah. This is only our third festival, so not many people have seen the movie, but enough people have seen it for me to feel confident that it works for the audience. I feel like my job now is mainly to get people in the seats and make sure the picture is in focus. The folks at CAAM have been great.

This is a tiny cast, so you had to get the right people to fill those roles, since they’re all important. How did you assemble your actors, and for Jodi and Jo, what was the dynamic like on set?

JP: Jo Mei and I have worked on several shorts before. We knew a bunch of the actors personally. Andrew Pang was someone we knew from the New York Asian American theater scene. He’s done a lot of smaller roles in big movies and TV. I’ve wanted to work with him for a long time, so it was amazing. Jodi came on because people have been saying for years that Jo Mei looks like a young Jodi. She was our first choice for the mother role, so we’re really lucky.

Jo: At first we were worried that she would ignore us! [laughs]

JP: Teyonah was the lead in one of my shorts, before she did Mad Men.

Jo: Teyonah and I went to Julliard together, and Andy and Lucas are Yale grads. I knew of Lucas through my friends at Yale, and he was the perfect type of actor we wanted.

The neighborhood you shot the film in looks gorgeous.

JP: The house is actually owned by a friend of mine and his partner. When they bought the house, they told me that if I ever wanted to shoot a movie there, I could use it. I wrote a script set in his house, and in 2012 showed up at his house with it. We had free access for three weeks.

Jodi: It’s also a really interesting house, architecturally. It’s another character in the movie. The architect designed an upside-down house. It’s really modern. Usually, you walk in and it’s the living room, the kitchen, whatever. In this house, the office is downstairs, then the bedrooms are upstairs, and the kitchen, living room, and dining room are on the top floor, where the best views are. I got to stay in the master bedroom!

JP: Knowing that we had that location nailed down, it allowed us to create the story around it. It really enhanced the story. The clean lines of the house really relate to what the characters are going through, and it’s a nice juxtaposition to the nature outside.

What has your experience been as an Asian American in cinema?

Jodi: JP doesn’t bang the Asian American thing over the head. The characters have this sister-brother relationship, which everybody has. The house is so modern, so indicative of where we’ve come as Asian Americans.

Jo: In the film, we address the fact that we’re Asian, but it’s not the point. We joke about it, because we recognize that we’re in a rural, white town in Pennsylvania in the movie. But we don’t talk about our race over breakfast! We’re human beings. As somebody who’s coming out of school and trying to break into the business, there are circumstances where people are aware that we don’t have to cast Asian actresses as the nail salon worker, or the newscaster, or the waitress, so they give it to somebody else. They’re not expanding those roles, so those little roles are disappearing.

JP: I feel like I would be dishonest if I wrote the film any other way. You could have made the argument, before we hired the cast, that if we hired non-Asian actors, the film would have wider appeal. That may be true. But there’s an inability in the indie film world to process what a film like ours looks like. We don’t think it’s particularly Asian American. I’ve had plenty of white folks come up to us and say, “This isn’t that Asian.” People see Asian faces on a poster and think, “This isn’t for me.” It’s crazy. If I don’t put my work out there the way I want to, then I’m part of the problem. If we white-wash our own movies, we’re fucked!

Jodi: This movie couldn’t exist without all those movies before that focused on being Asian American. It’s an evolutionary process. I mean, I did Flower Drum Song on Broadway, and people still look at that play as the “Asian play.” People were hearing this at the ticket booth. “Do you want to see the Asian play?” This is Rodgers and Hammerstein! Oh my god. Can we ever get beyond this?

JP: In the indie world, I think if people see Asian faces, frankly, they tend to be Asians, and the film is about Asia, or they’re victims of men. I don’t think they know how to process an Asian American, middle-class family drama. At one of our Q&A’s, in Bend, Oregon, a woman that had seen the entire film raised her hand and said, “Was the entire film shot in Japan?” We had a great premiere there, and I wasn’t offended, but to me, that struck me. There’s nothing to indicate that the film takes place anywhere other than America in the present day, but because this woman saw Asian faces, she thought it was in another country.

Jo: In mainstream cinema, they don’t acknowledge the existence of Asian Americans in society. You’re in a hospital, and all the faces are black and white. Even if we were extras, it would at least acknowledge that we exist. When this begins to happen more, women like the one in Oregon wouldn’t think that Asians only exist in Asia.

Jodi: We have to tell our own stories in movies and include faces like ours. Otherwise, we’ll never get into the mainstream. Even if this movie only does an eighth of what X-Men does…

JP: I’d be happy with an eighth! [laughs] I’d be happy with one eight-hundredth!

Jodi: [laughs] You know what I’m saying!

Awesome Asian Bad Guys, which screened a couple of weeks ago at CAAMFest, is an action-comedy that follows The National Film Society, a couple of Asian Los Angeles Youtubers (Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco), as they attempt to track down and assemble the baddest, scariest, most awesome Asian bad guys from the ’80s and ’90s like Al Leong (Die Hard) and Yuji Okumoto (The Karate Kid, Part II) to kick ass and carry out a dangerous rescue mission. An homage to badass Asian actors that highlights them as the stars of the show and not throwaway two-bit villains, Awesome Asian Bad Guys is a fun, silly comedy that should tickle the fancy of anyone who fondly remembers guys like Dante Basco (Rufio, Hook). The film also stars Randall Park, Tamlyn Tomita, and Aaron Takahashi.

Co-director Patrick Epino chatted with us at CAAMFest about the National Film Society, tracking down the bad guys in real life, filming action for the first time, his experience at CAAMFest, and more.

The films at CAAMFest showed the Asian American experience in many ways, but your film views it from a different angle, one that’s more light-hearted and funny.

Patrick: We’ve done our fair share of films…We just wanted to make something kind of fun. The story of the National Film Society is that Steve and I were both in odd places. I’d made a feature that was this dark, brooding comedy. Stephen made a lot of serious short films. Things weren’t super awesome, and we met at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. We both had an interest in building audiences, new media, stuff like that. I had this idea, he had one, we combined them, and we decided to work together and become the National Film Society, which is different from both of our ideas. He wanted to use online video, I wanted to create this Wu-Tang Clan of filmmakers and really leverage audiences and networks and stuff. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s helped us to get to where we are. We started doing goofy online videos, and it translated into Awesome Asian Bad Guys. We still love all kinds of films and still have ideas for different types of projects, but for NFS and Awesome Asian Bad Guys, it’s like, let’s just make this as fun as we can.

You study film and Asian-Am stuff, and you hear about the Long Duck Dongs, the Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s…all these marginalized, emasculated Asian characters. What about the bad guys?! Those are the ones I remember! They’re awesome!

So it was as simple as that. They’re awesome!

Patrick: Yeah, it was awesome! I remember Al Leong as a kid. That guy scared me.

So you got this idea for this project about these Asian bad guys. Did you then pursue the actors?

Patrick: When we first made this Youtube video in 2011 called Awesome Asian Bad Guys, we hypothesized about making, like, The Expendables but with Asian bad guys. In maybe May 2012 we thought about making it and we brought Phil Yu, Angry Asian Man, on as an executive producer. We brought on Milton Liu as our writer, a funny, smart-ass-y kind of guy. He introduced us to Diana Williams, a great producer, super talented. With the actors…we’d shot a couple online videos with Aaron Takahashi and Dante Basco. Tamlyn Tomita knew of us. We went to Aaron, Randall (Park), just asking them to be in it. They were totally down, so we got some momentum from  that. We had contacted Al Leong through facebook for our original video, and he was super cool. It was a lot of fun hunting those guys down.

Randall is hilarious.

Patrick: Randall’s amazing. There were a couple times on set where that guy would just go. It was just him–everyone else had left the scene, and he’d so some funny things. He did this web series called “The Food” that’s just the best.

Was the film pretty scripted or was there some ad-lib involved?

Patrick: It was mostly scripted. Everyone threw in things here and there on different takes, but for the most part it’s what was in Milton’s script. We would have loved to play with more improv stuff, but we were always on the fly.

I was actually surprised at how good the action scenes were in the film.

Patrick: We were looking for fight coordinators and we ended up with this guy, Sunny Sun. He’s amazingly talented. He was a stuntman on The Expendables, he’s choreographed stuff for The Avengers. He brought some of his guys on to do the fights, and it was a pleasure working with him. So much fun. I thought I was a 90’s indie film guy. I wanted to make a Jarmusch film or a Kiarostami film or something, you know? I never learned how to choreograph action, but then I learned I don’t have to! There are people to do that for me!

There’s a great child actor in the film. She gets to participate in a lot of the action scenes as well, doing cartwheels and stuff! Where did you find her?

Patrick: We held some auditions for a girl who could do action. She’s a martial artist named Jasmin Currey. Her whole family are, like, black belts in Tae Kwon Do. She’s the sweetest kid, and it was great to work with her. I was like, oh man, this girl could kick my ass! She’s training right now, trying to perfect everything she does as a martial artist and potentially a stuntwoman.

Was the plan all along to string the webisodes together as a film?

Patrick: No, I don’t think so. The script was written, and it was a pretty long script. 60 pages. I guess it was kind of written as a TV show, with act breaks, but when it became and option to screen in festivals, we though we should make it a full piece. The vlog interjections in the film were done after the fact to act as transitions that contextualize what we do for people who don’t know who the hell we are. (laughs)

How has your experience at CAAMFest been?

Patrick: Great. I’m from the Bay, so it’s been a real pleasure. Friends and family came to our screening last night.

Who are some working Asian American filmmakers you particularly enjoy?

Patrick: I really like J.P. Chan’s stuff. I’m a big fan of Ham Tran’s work. I met him in ’04 in Toronto for his short film, The Anniversary. There are a lot of people doing good stuff online. I’m excited to see what the Wong Fu guys do with the money that they raised on Indiegogo. I have no idea what their script is about, so I’m excited for that.

How to Fight in Six Inch Heels

Last Thursday night at San Francisco’s beautiful Castro theater, CAAMFest 2014 kicked with a silly-fun romantic comedy to set the tone for the rest of the 11-day fest. With a ritzy red carpet and droves of sharply-dressed attendees, there was ample excitement in the air for what is one of the most important film festivals in the country for the Asian American community.

CAAM executive director Stephen Gong and festival director Masashi Niwano thanked the packed house of festival-goers and prepped them for what this year’s festival has in store (check out our festival preview for more). They then introduced director Ham Tran to the stage, a long time friend of CAAMFest who’s been showing his films at the festival for over a decade. This year he brought How to Fight in Six Inch Heels, an Asian-American production that was a box office hit in Vietnam, where the majority of the movie is set. With him were his cast and crew, who participated in a Q&A following the film.

Following a short film centered on the evolution of the real-life career of  How to Fight star Kathy Uyen, the feature film got underway. It follows a pretty, neurotic Vietnamese American girl working as an assistant to a domineering French designer in the New York fashion industry. With her fiancé working abroad in Vietnam, she begins to suspect he’s cheating with one of three models working with him when she spies a pair of red heels in his apartment during a Skype call. Determined to smoke out the would be skank, she flies out to Saigon, leaving her best friend George to cover her ass at work. When she arrives, her fashion-god friend Danny glams her up with a makeover and shoves her into the Saigon fashion world where she inadvertently becomes a bit of a runway phenomenon. Now in close proximity to the models in suspect, she’s surprised when she finds herself developing friendships with each of them.

This is light material with cutesy humor running throughout. The film is well crafted and should please general audiences, bouncing between Vietnamese and English dialogue smoothly. Uyen is strong, but it feels like we’ve seen this same quirky, romantically naive character before (The Devil Wears Prada being the obvious example). Every note she hits, while in tune, feels too familiar, which points to the film’s biggest weakness. How to Fight in Six Inch Heels derives too much from American cinema, hitting every rom-com trope and story beat in the book. Many of the characters feel overblown (the gay men especially), but most of the performances hit the mark.

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

A documentary that matches its subject’s witty, piercing intellect in its style and form, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs chronicles the philosophies and staggering accomplishments of Boggs, a Chinese American who dedicated most of her 95 years on this earth to empowering and inspiring the African American community. Director Grace Lee (no relation) uses archival footage, interviews with Boggs and several of her colleagues and friends, and clever vignettes explaining the core principles of two of her major influences, Hegel and Marx, to bring to light not just Boggs’ lifetime milestones, but her tendencies and complexities as a person.

Detroit is the setting, as Boggs calls it home and has played a big part in working to restore the city in the wake of the industrial fallout. Boggs’ most defining characteristic is her hunger to challenge and open the minds of everyone she meets. In the film’s most memorable moment, she sits with Danny Glover in her home and poses that when people talk about “quality education”, what they’re really talking about is black students aspiring to be more like white students. Glover is floored, rendered speechless, and it’s at once hilarious and inspirational. Though Detroit is a shell of its former self, activists like Boggs help to remind us of where its fallen from, why it fell, and where we can take it, if we’re willing to put in the effort and thought. A terrific film.

Cold Eyes

A remake of Yau Nai Hoi’s Eye in the Sky, Cold Eyes, by co-directors Ui-seok Jo and Byung-seo Kim, is a crime thriller set in Seoul that pits a group of undercover surveillance cops against a gaggle of gangsters, with the good guys trying to smoke out the criminals’ mysterious leader. Our hero is Yoon Joo (Han Hyo Ju), a new recruit who has a prodigious photographic memory (if she can clear her head enough to access it) who’s brought in and mentored by veteran Detective Hwang (Sol Kyung Gu). Earning the codename “Piglet”, she joins the team in identifying suspects on the street (while retaining their anonymity, of course). Leading the baddies is the cerebral, deadly James (Jung Woo Sung), who overseas the heists from tall rooftops and viciously dispatches of weak links in the operation without hesitation. The two parties are on a collision course, and as Piglet’s skills help the team close in on James and his crew, he begins to fight back, showing them exactly what he’s capable of.

Jo and Kim have crafted a worthy remake, a tense, riveting look at the classic cops vs. robbers scenario with a focus on advanced technology and modern stratagems. Watching Hwang maneuver his team through the Seoul streets like a chess mastermind is a treat, but it can wear thin. Sometimes the film gets carried away with using video game-like CG street maps that lay out the team’s positions in the city, which serves its function but feels like a bit of a cheat at times. Still, the on-foot, shadowy pursuits are heightened by the public arena, with each of the players moving through the environments swiftly but without looking suspicious. It’s incredibly gripping stuff, and the surprisingly deep character arcs for the mains (the supporting players seem half-baked) makes Cold Eyes’ characters more relatable than those in your average Hollywood heist picture.

CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian Film Festival, kicks off tomorrow night, Thursday, March 13th, and runs through March 23rd. Presented by the Center for Asian American Media, the festival pays tribute to pioneers of Asian cinema while also providing a platform for emerging Asian filmmakers to showcase their new projects. With Asians and Asian Americans being woefully underrepresented in all forms of media, the festival gives much needed exposure to the Asian cinematic perspective.

Opening Night, Centerpiece, Closing Night, and Special Presentations

The fest kicks off at the Castro Theater with the North American premiere of How to Fight in Six Inch Heels, a Vietnamese box office hit that’s been compared to The Devil Wears Prada. After a post-screening Q&A with director Ham Tran and his cast and crew, the festivities will continue at the Asian Art Museum for the Opening Night Gala.

The festival has not one, but two centerpiece films this year. American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, by director Grace Lee, chronicles the life of Grace Lee Boggs, the 98-year-0ld feminist and social activist. Also being highlighted is a film on the other side of the spectrum entirely: Cold Eyes is a South Korean crime thriller that had great success overseas.

Closing out the festival is Delano Manongs, which will be screening in the East Bay at the New Parkway theater in Oakland, a first for the festival. The doc follows the story of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American labor organizer who spearheaded strikes for farmers on the west coast.

Other festival highlights:

• Spotlight on Grace Lee
• Retrospective on filmmakers and Dharamshala International Film Festival directors Ritu and Tenzing
• A Run Run Shaw tribute
• Out of the Vaults, a showcase of two films from Joseph Sunn Jue’s Grandview Film Company
• Memories to Light 2.0, an exploration of Asian America through home movies

Directions In Sound and Superawesome Launch

The folks at CAAMFest has always been known to throw the biggest, coolest festival parties and events around, and they aren’t slouching this year. Directions in Sound is a live music program showcasing music acts from Korea, Vietnam, and the Bay Area, and this year CAAM is presenting two live concerts: “Here Comes Treble”, an all-female show, and “Korean Showcase”, consisting of all Korean bands.

My most anticipated event is the “Superawesome Launch Featuring Awesome Asian Bad Guys”, which will be held at the Oakland Museum of California. Featuring live music, an Asian-focused Off the Grid, the event also includes a screening of Awesome Asian Bad Guys, an action-comedy by Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco that stars old Asian actors who you’ve seen play evil dudes in movies for years.

For more info, visit caamfest.com 

My first experience at CAAMFest was a blast. It was exciting to see Asian-American cinema come into its own right before my eyes. Being that there aren’t many true representations of Asian America in cinema today (that’s an understatement), the field is wide open for these Asian-American independent filmmakers to make their voices heard in whatever way they see fit; they’re pioneers in that way. They represented the culture well, with staggeringly varied and unique films that show just how versatile, imaginative, and inclusive the Asian-American perspective can be.

The festival didn’t focus exclusively on the medium of film, however, and provided a platform for creative minds in other fields; various chefs, bands, DJs, and writers got to express themselves through their respective mediums as well. From live concerts, to food tastings, to book signings, there was a lot to experience at CAAMFest. The different art forms converged to make for some amazing live events.

At San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, Amrit Singh, executive editor at Stereogum.com, screened Dosa Hunt, his short film in which he takes some of his New Yorker musician buddies (of bands like Das Racist, Vampire Weekend, and Neon Indian) and searches for the best dosa (a South Indian potato-filled crepe) in New York City. CAAM provided us with a dosa truck outside the museum that satiated our gargantuan dosa cravings, and Heems—of the now-defunct Das Racist and star of Dosa Hunt—played a trippy set with fellow former Das Racist member, Dapwell, to top off the night. A great movie, delicious food, and live music all worked together to put on an entertaining show.

There were a handful of excellent films at the festival, a lot of good ones, and some clunkers. Not everything I watched was gold, not even close. However, each film contributes to defining Asian-American cinema, which is immeasurably valuable. It’ll be a joy to watch how Asian-American cinema evolves over the next few years, and CAAMFest is the best place on earth to witness this growth. I look forward to what next year’s festival brings to the table.

Way Too Indie’s Top 5 films at CAAMFest 2013

#1 Seeking Asian Female

There’s something organic and unpredictable about the way Seeking Asian Female evolves as a story that captured me like no other film at the festival. The title refers to the attraction of old white men to young Asian women, or “yellow fever”, but the film isn’t about that at all. It’s about two completely different people from opposite ends of the earth who are forced to fall in love on a time crunch and the director filming them who somehow gets wrapped up in all their quarrels. At the end of the film, I was overjoyed to find that it had taught me something about myself. Watch this movie and prepare to have your expectations shattered.

#2 Abigail Harm

What struck me about Abigail Harm was the unearthly, enchanting version of New York director Lee Isaac Chung creates. The barrenness, the angelic light, the silence— this is a New York never before seen on screen. His take on the classic Korean folktale “The Woodcutter and the Nymph” is stirring, visceral, and modern, though it stays true to the humanistic tone of the original. Amanda Plummer is endearing and magnetic, effortlessly acting as the film’s emotional core. There is a sort of anti-chase-scene that takes place in a beautiful empty building that is breathtaking. An unforgettable film.

#3 Late Summer

I entered this film feeling as jaded as can be, expecting a third-rate attempt at emulating the great Yasujiro Ozu. I quickly realized how wrong I was as Ernie Park’s elegant homage to Ozu serenaded me into a state of calm and awareness. Park clearly understands what makes Ozu great and utilizes the master’s tools with a deft hand. His telling of an Asian story through a black family in Tennessee is a brilliant angle that gives Late Summer a distinctly Asian-American voice.

#4 Harana

Harana affected me on a personal level, as I’m a Filipino-American born in the United States who has never left the country, let alone visited the Philippines. This film is so beautiful and charming, it made me want to hop on a plane and visit my parents’ homeland. However, this movie should work for any romantic who misses the good old days when it was cool to be a little corny when courting a girl (Say Anything…). There are so many touching moments in Harana, so many beautiful songs and warm conversations that it’s hard not to fall in love with it. If you’re having a bad day, watch Harana.

#5 Midnight’s Children

Though many feel that Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a little dense and scatterbrained narratively, but I found myself too distracted by the stunning visuals in the film most of the time to notice. Yes, there are some issues here—Rushdie is obviously not completely comfortable writing screenplays—but the problems are easy to ignore when you get so lost in the world being created on-screen. The sheer scope of the film is awe-inspiring, the cinematography is gorgeous and whimsical, and the cast is on-point. Flaws and all, it’s a colorful, wild ride that shouldn’t be missed.

Seeking Asian Female

Director Debbie Lum set out to make a documentary about “yellow fever”—the infatuation some older white men have with younger Asian women that can border on fetishism. What she got instead was something extraordinary, something she couldn’t have planned for. In the film, she interviews an array of men who are afflicted with the “fever”, but partway through the process, makes the decision to focus her story on Steven, a 60-year-old, creepy, off-puttingly enthusiastic man who loves his Asian women (including, to her chagrin, Debbie.) In his online search for a mail-order bride, Steven finds Sandy, a 30-year-old small town girl from China who, upon only meeting Steven twice, agrees to move to California and marry him. Debbie films the fledgling couple through their growing pains and emotional outbursts and reluctantly gets dragged into their plight, acting as their translator and surrogate marriage counselor. Ethically compromised as a filmmaker, Debbie finds herself stuck in the middle of a volatile culture clash that she doesn’t know how to escape.

Seeking Asian Female is an endlessly surprising film that’s as enlightening as it is entertaining. The taboo subject matter is sure to elicit moans, groans, cynicism, and perhaps even disgust, but Lum’s decision to focus exclusively on one couple elevates the story, transcending the original premise. This is a love story, and a fascinatingly dark and unique one at that. It’s as engaging a documentary as I’ve seen in a long time; there are peaks and valleys, twists and turns, moments of dire conflict, and moments of revelation. The ending is unexpected, a complete wake-up call.

RATING: 9

Old Romances

Unbridled nostalgia fuels Old Romances, a warm-hearted homage to Singapore by a native, the infamous Royston Tan. A sort of sequel to Tan’s 2010 film, Old Places, Old Romances follows the same simple and straightforward format as its predecessor: Tan shows us footage of various public meeting places in Singapore—cafes, shops, parks, etc.—and accompanies it with audio of people sharing their fondest memories of the local spots. It’s a cinematic time capsule, capturing these places as they were before they inevitably vanish (several of the locations from Old Places are now gone.)

Tan chose to have the different members of the public share their memories over the phone and use that audio in the film, a brilliant decision that gives the sense that we’re having an informal chat with the Singaporeans about their beloved haunts. The soundtrack is eye-rollingly generic and often unnecessary; the ambient sound from the locations is as much a part of the story as the images and would serve as the perfect sonic backdrop for the film. Old Romances is an earnest, pleasant film that’s also somewhat underwhelming.

RATING: 6.9

Mekong Hotel

A fourth wall-breaking experimental film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mekong Hotel has a few thoughtful and resonant moments, but is ultimately flat, indulgent, and doesn’t provide enough to chew on for it to be worthwhile. The film makes shifts from an existential love story about a boy and girl, to scenes of an intestine-eating, soul-possessing ghost mother, to footage of the actors not acting at all, speaking about their real life experiences. The only constant throughout the film is the titular hotel and the ever-present Mekong River.

Part fiction, part documentary, Mekong Hotel’s experimental shifts in reality, reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami’s work, would be exciting if only there were something more to latch on to. There is some interesting symbolism going on here—the ghost mother eating her daughter’s intestines illustrate Thailand’s desperation—but the impact of the symbolism is stifled by Weerasethakul’s lingering…lingering…lingering camera and the tiresome, overused guitar songs that are plastered over nearly every moment. There’s something interesting going on under the hood here, but it’s a chore to watch.

RATING: 4.8

The Cheer Ambassadors

A slightly above-average underdog sports documentary, The Cheer Ambassadors provides everything you expect from the subgenre; an undersized, underrated, hard working team with a dream, their battle through obstacles and hardships on their rise to the top, and of course, the team’s nail-biting, exhilarating performance on the biggest stage in the world. Following the cheerleading squad from Bangkok University in Thailand on their journey to the cheerleading world championships in Orlando Florida, The Cheer Ambassadors tells a remarkable story in an all-too-familiar fashion. You won’t find anything unexpected here, but it’s a well made film that succeeds in endearing its subjects to us—you will undoubtedly feel compelled to get up and…ahem…cheer the kids on by the film’s climax. Team Thailand’s story is extraordinary, but as a film, The Cheer Ambassadors is nothing special.

RATING: 6.1

Memory of Forgotten War

We often forget how devastating and life-changing war can be on a personal level for the individuals involved. The broader world implications are typically given all the attention, but Memory of Forgotten War puts a spotlight on how the aftermath of the Korean War changed the lives of Korean families forever. The 38th parallel, the resulting division of Korea into North and South after World War II, literally split families in half, forbidding them from making any contact with each other. Director Deann Borshay Liem interviews Korean civilians who immigrated to the United States following the war as they share their harrowing memories and mourn the lost time with their families that they will never get back. It’s a heartbreaking situation that is sadly still relevant today, and Memory of Forgotten War is an important and well-constructed insight into the issue.

RATING: 7.2

Abigail Harm

Abigail Harm is a modern interpretation of a classic Korean folktale that drips with atmosphere and expertly balances fantasy with raw human emotion. Set in a darker, otherworldly version of New York City, we follow the lonely Abigail (Amanda Plummer), a woman unseen; her only human interaction is with the blind people she aids by reading books to them. She discovers an enigmatic intruder in her apartment (Will Patton), who she greets with warm hospitality, which inspires him to offer her a chance at true love. He instructs Abigail to visit an abandoned warehouse where she finds an attractive young man (Tetsuo Kuramochi) taking a bath who has seemingly materialized out of nothing. She takes possession of the stranger’s bathrobe which wins her his undying love as long as she keeps it. Abigail reacts to the extreme sensations that come with love much like a blind person would react to seeing for the first time.

Like another CAAMFest favorite, Late Summer, Abigail Harm is a great example of what Asian American cinema can be. Director Lee Isaac Chung delivers the message of the original tale with a touch of mystery and offers up a strangely stimulating style of romance. Plummer and Kuramochi playfully spin around each other like ballet dancers, touching and exploring with childlike naiveté. Plummer is always impressive, but this may be her best work. She conveys loneliness and desolation with delicate movements and facial expressions, and her chemistry with Kuramochi is fascinating to watch.

Chung’s New York is one-of-a-kind; the typical hustle and bustle is absent, with dreamlike serenity in its place. Everything feels unstuck in time and eerily still, which helps Plummer’s performance shine. This is an ethereal, contemplative romance that should delight fans of the arthouse.

RATING: 8.5

Harana

Harana takes its name from a dying tradition in the Philippines, which is the act of a boy serenading a girl he fancies outside her house at night, in hopes that her parents will invite him inside to declare his love face to face. Nowadays, the tradition isn’t practiced nearly at all, with kids preferring to sing at their local karaoke bars. Florante, an Filipino-American guitarist, goes on a quest to gather an elderly trio of the last surviving “haranistas”— men who were masters at harana—and take them on a nostalgic tour of the Philippines to play and record previously unrecorded harana songs that would otherwise be lost.

Director Benito Bautista constantly provides beautiful moment after beautiful moment. From sublime, intimate footage of the haranistas overflowing with emotion as they sing their beloved songs, to a segment where the aging crooners enact harana on behalf of a young boy too shy to ask a girl out himself. When the haranistas bid each other farewell at the end of their tour, the emotion is overwhelming; it’s clear they will not meet again in this lifetime, though they are thankful that they got to share the experience with one another. Harana is good for the soul, a loving look at a tradition that represents the uninhibited romance lost on the youth of today.

RATING: 8.1

Sunset Stories

May (Monique Gabriella Curnen), a neurotic nurse living in Boston, is sent back to her hometown of Los Angeles and tasked with picking up and transporting a cooler containing fragile human skin tissue. She’s thrown for a loop when she runs into her ex, JP (Sung Kang), and in her befuddlement, loses the cooler. The ex-lovers revisit their damaged history as they follow the trail of the Macguffin on an adventure through the So-Cal sprawl. They (predictably) encounter painfully stereotypical LA eccentrics on their journey and learn lessons about what love really means to them.

The premise is absurd, but the fairy-tale presentation softens the blow…slightly.The film’s heart is in the right place, and its message about love is an interesting one. However, nothing can save Sunset Stories from its main problem, that it thinks it’s more clever than it is. There is a cringe-worthy scene in which two small characters, a trans-gender night club singer and a butch bike mechanic, have a long, disposable, forgettable conversation for no good reason. It’s great whenever these communities are represented on screen, but scenes like this are woefully ham-fisted. We’re smarter than that. Ernesto Foronda and Silas Howard’s direction is sterile and uninteresting, though it never looks amateurish.

Easily the film’s saving grace is the wonderful cast, who really carry the movie. Everybody is great, and the sub-par writing betrays them. Curnen is high-strung and paranoid without ever being irritating, and Kang provides the perfect amount of calm-and-collected to complement her. There’s just not enough good in Sunset Stories to warrant a watch.

RATING: 5.2

This past Sunday, I saw a pair of fantastic adaptations of prize-winning books: Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s epic Midnight’s Children, and Mira Nair’s take on Mohsin Hamid’s cultural drama, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, starring Riz Ahmed, Liev Schreiber, Kate Hudson, and Keifer Sutherland. The screenings were held at San Francisco’s beautiful Castro Theater, which is one of my favorites in the Bay Area.

After the screening of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the red carpet was rolled out for two of the stars of Midnight’s Children, Satya Bhabha (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The New Girl), and Samrat Chakrabarti (The Waiting City). After the red carpet, I moved up to the mezzanine for a pre-screening party with amazing Indian food and delicious sweets from Jade Chocolates. Following the screening of their film, Bhabha and Chakrabarti answered a few questions in a fun and engaging Q&A. This was the strongest day of the festival so far, and I highly recommend both films.

(Satya Bhabha & Samrat Chakrabarti)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

An adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s bestselling novel, Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist follows Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani pulled in two directions by his American dream and his devotion to his native Pakistan. It’s a startling commentary on the dangerous fundamentalism that is shared—frighteningly—by both terrorists and anti-terrorists.

The story begins in Lahore, Pakistan in 2011. The city is in a state of unrest due to the the American military presence. Changez—deemed a ‘person of interest’ by the CIA—is interviewed by an American reporter (Liev Schreiber) about his life from 2001 leading up to the present: He graduated college, made a name for himself on Wall Street, and found a beautiful American girlfriend. He was a man living out the American dream. However, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the the country he had learned to love ridiculed and reduced him to his fundamental form: a Pakistani. A foreigner. His American dream was ripped away in an instant. The United States turned its back on him and he endured emasculating interrogations and hateful accusations. It’s this dismissal of humanity, of the individual, that Changez aims to combat.

Nair does a good job of getting the message across, but the story is a little indulgent and hits the nail on the head too hard. Ahmed’s performance is impressively subdued and paints the picture of cultural divide better than the script does. The difficult and uncomfortable situations he is put in speak a little too loudly, but he sells them like a pro. The rest of the cast are excellent as well, with Keifer Sutherland being the standout as Changez’s omnipotent boss and mentor on Wall Street. Declan Quinn’s lush cinematography looks absolutely slick but gets dirty when it needs to. The ending is disappointingly trite and doesn’t resonate emotionally, but the film hits a good pace leading up to that point, which is difficult for such a weighty two-hour drama.

RATING: 7.7

Midnight’s Children

Deepa Mehta and Salman Rushdie give us a lot to digest in their adaptation of Rushdie’s award winning novel, Midnight’s Children. Maybe a little too much; this film is DENSE. Themes, images, symbolism, plot points, and new characters are thrown at us at such a speed that by the end of the film, it’s hard to remember it all. The good news? Everything presented is wonderful; the film is visually breathtaking, deeply moving, epic, and joyously whimsical. Watching Midnight’s Children is like trying to eat a huge bowl of ice cream as fast as you can; it’ll all be a blur, it’ll give you a headache, and you’ll wish you could have taken your time, but it’s also delicious and incredibly fun, and you’ll look back on the experience fondly.

We follow Saleem (Satya Bhabha), who was born at the stroke of midnight at the precise moment India gained its independence in 1947. As he grows older, he discovers two extraordinary things: he can telepathically gather every other child born at the moment he was (hence the title) for pow-wows in his bedroom, and secondly, his life story is somehow linked to the political trajectory of India and its people. Saleem finds himself in a dangerous love triangle with two other Midnight’s Children, the kind, diplomatic Parvati (Shriya Saran), and the bull-headed Shiva (Siddharth), who was switched with Saleem at birth.

Rushdie wrote the screenplay himself, which is apparent in how caught up he gets in the details of the narrative. It’s obvious that he couldn’t help but try to cram in as many moments from the book as he could. That’s common fault in book-to-film adaptations. However, the essence and spirit of the book remain intact, so the script’s density far from a deal-breaker. The hopeful tone of the film feels just right, and there are several powerful moments throughout that are guaranteed to rouse and inspire you. Rushdie narrates the film himself, which provides a nice thread to tie the branching narrative together, but is otherwise unnecessary.

Mehta’s visuals are intoxicating, a rush of color and life that you won’t be able to take your eyes off of. Everything looks magical while representing India with sincerity and love. An exhilarating bit involving a low sweeping camera and Saleem dancing the twist in glistening sunlight comes to mind. This is eye candy on the highest level.

The cast is excellent across the board, delivering the exuberant dialog with flair. Bhabha couldn’t have done a better job. He gives his all in every scene and is irresistibly likable and sympathetic. Midnight’s Children is a sprawling epic that feels slightly bloated, but constantly excites the senses in a way that will keep you enchanted from beginning to end.

RATING: 8.2

Late Summer

Late Summer borrows its title from the work of one of the most celebrated directors of all time, Yasujiro Ozu. If you’re familiar with Ozu’s work, you’ll recognize that the title makes quite the statement. Surely director Ernie Park isn’t hoping to match the near cinematic perfection of Ozu’s family-drama masterpieces (Late Spring, Early Summer, etc.), is he? The answer is no, he is not so bold. Late Summer is a humble, tasteful love letter to the late, great auteur from an avid and educated appreciator of his work. He plays with several of Ozu’s signature techniques without abusing them; he merely gives them a knowing and appreciative nod. Park takes Ozu’s distinctly Eastern style of storytelling and injects it into a distinctly Western setting; an artsy black community in Nashville Tennessee to be exact. What’s remarkable is that it’s an Asian story set in the West; a look at an American family from the perspective of world cinema.

Though the setting is brand new, the story here is familiar Ozu territory. Nadia is a high school grad who lives with her single mother who she has depended on her whole life. Lately, everybody is pressuring Nadia to leave Nashville to go to college, but she is stubbornly resistant to the idea, wanting nothing but to stay with her mother and keep things the way they are. The thought of abandoning her mom saddens her deeply, but the people around her—including her mother—constantly push the reality that it’s time for her to move on to the next stage of her life.

Those familiar with Ozu’s work will recognize many of the techniques and themes utilized by Park. The film is composed entirely of static, quiet, serene shots of occupied an unoccupied spaces. Form is the focus here, though Park isn’t as meticulous about his composition as Ozu, nor is he trying to be (the film was shot in ten days.) The dialog, acting, and flow of the film are very much taken from Eastern cinema, which makes for a unique and refreshing portrayal of Nashville, one devoid of stereotypes. Park’s determined avoidance of tropes can be a little distracting at times, but that’s mostly a testament to how Western cinema has conditioned us to see Nashville as one thing only. Late Summer is a great example of what Asian American cinema can be.

RATING: 8.5

When Night Falls

It’s difficult to convey the crippling weight of death cinematically, as a large part of what makes the thought of it so unbearable is the torturously slow passage of time. In When Night Falls, director Ying Liang captures the way death permeates every moment of our lives when all hope is lost. In 2008, Yang Jia, a young man who believed he was wrongfully accused of theft and abused during the interrogation process, walked into a police station and murdered six officers, stabbing them repeatedly with a knife. Yang was sentenced to death. When Night Falls is a fictionalized account of Yang’s mother, Wang Jingmei’s dark, lonely search for justice for her son during his trail. It’s an intrepid and appropriately challenging piece of cinema that has no aim to entertain.

Nai An plays Wang with resounding gravitas. A minutes-long shot in which she rips days off of a calendar in a despairing trance is a riveting. The movie is almost entirely comprised of long, uneventful shots like this, like a morbid version of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman. The function of the constant lingering is to make us feel the gravity and misery that has poisoned Wang’s world. To watch her sit in her son’s now vacant bedroom staring at his bed that will never be used again is overwhelmingly depressing. There’s a dark cloud of hopelessness hanging over every frame of When Night Falls, and it isn’t likely to be an enjoyable or even tolerable experience for most, mostly due to its snail pace. It is, however, a significant artistic meditation on morality and loss that will probably leave you in desperate need of a pick-me-up.

RATING: 7

High Tech, Low Life

The People’s Republic of China’s extensive suppression of the internet in the country—which is unmatched by any other country in the world—is often referred to as “The Great Firewall.” High Tech, Low Life follows the lives of two bloggers—Zola and Tiger Temple—in their pursuit of the truth, in spite of the PRC’s restrictions. Zola is the more rebellious of the two, a young man who lives to attract attention through the broadcasting of the (sometimes ugly) truth. On his popular blog, he posted a photo of himself jumping over the Great Wall of China as a defiant middle finger to the PRC’s censorship. Tiger Temple is middle-aged, calm, and more activist than agitator. He posts videos of farmers who express how they have felt neglected by the Chinese government for years, giving them a voice they never had.

There is a large, intriguing David-and-Goliath story going on here that deserves to be the focus of Stephen Maing’s High Tech, Low Life. Unfortunately, Maing chooses instead to zoom in way too close, focusing on the quirky lives of his protagonists and in doing so fails to convey the magnitude and implications of their endeavors. There is a big lack of social and political context here, which reduces this film to being a documentary about two fairly interesting people and their daily lives. There are plenty of other docs like this, and it’s a shame that the storyline that should make this film unique is so downplayed.

RATING: 5.2

CAAMFest kicked off with a screening of Evan Jackson Leong’s look into the Jeremy Lin phenomenon, Linsanity, at San Francisco’s Castro Theater, and then moved a few blocks down Market Street to the beautiful Asian Art Museum for the Opening Night Gala. The Museum was transformed into a bustling party room full of excited festival-goers, filmmakers, and slimy press people like me. Well, maybe I was the only slimy one, but nevertheless, everybody was buzzing.

There were lots of local chefs to provide us with delicious food (the chocolates from Socola Chocolatier were my favorite) and frosty alcoholic beverages raised in the air all throughout the building. The San Francisco community came out strong, and the enthusiasm was contagious. When I asked people what their most anticipated films of the festival were, the responses were all over the board, which should be an indicator that this festival’s lineup is going to have a bit for everybody. The party was crazy fun, but now on to the important stuff…the films!

I was a loser and missed the opening night screening of Linsanity, but I had seen it at the press conference for the festival held a few weeks ago. On Friday, I saw Graceland, a thriller from the Philippines, and Someone I Used to Know, an ensemble drama a la Breakfast Club but set on a summer night in Los Angeles.

Linsanity

This is embarrassing, but I’ll admit it: I had almost no clue who Jeremy Lin was going into this movie. I’d heard his name on TV a few times, but that’s about it. Evan Jackson Leong’s documentary follows Lin’s story of hard work and struggle from childhood to worldwide NBA superstar. Some of the footage of Lin playing ball is absolutely astonishing; to see him dominate Kobe Bryant and the Lakers after Kobe Bryant claimed to have never heard of him was a highlight. However, the most enjoyable bits of the film are the moments when we see Lin in an intimate environment, being himself and having fun. Later in the film, when Lin is in the NBA and obviously financially stable, we see him go to Target and get excited over a tacky fountain he found in the novelty aisle. Stuff like this gives his story heart and genuineness.

The success of this movie isn’t simply the chronicling of Lin’s rise to fame; it shows that even through all the craziness on his rise to the top, he remained the same goofy, likable guy throughout. There’s nothing really bad to say about this film, other than that it is a pretty standard sports documentary with an all-too-familiar structure to the story. But man, no matter how much you watch footage of this guy on the court, it still sizzles.

RATING: 7.4

Graceland

A raw, violent hostage thriller from the Philippines, Graceland, by director Ron Morales is rock-solid, though just short of exceptional. Arnold Reyes works as a chauffeur in Manila for a corrupt businessman while also juggling the stresses of his home life; his disobedient daughter and his hospitalized wife weigh on his mind heavily. When kidnappers rip his and the congressman’s daughter away from him as he is driving them home from school, a classic tale of large ransoms, corruption, double-crosses, and violence emerges. The story is executed well, but aside from the uncommon (for this kind of film) setting of Manila, it’s quite derivative. There is not a scene in this movie that I haven’t seen before in some other hostage thriller. There are some scenes from Taken, some from Akira Kurosawa’s incredible High and Low, and even some Die Hard thrown in. Hell, there’s even stuff from Ransom: “Give me back my daughter!” Again, the scenes always work, but there’s nothing new brought to the table here.

The cinematography is a little dark at times, literally; in some scenes, I had to strain my eyes just to make out what the hell I was looking at. But overall, the visuals serve the story well, which is always the goal. Arnold Reyes is very good as the lead, showing just the right amount of emotion when he needs to without overdoing it. A standout role is Dido De La Paz as the classic barking, mean-faced “bad cop.” His imposing physicality and constant irritation are very effective. The twist at the end is unsurprising, predictable, and lacks any punch (I only call it a twist because it is presented as such in the film), but the story leading up to that point has a frenetic pace that never slows down and always entertains.

RATING: 7

Tonight marks the opening night of CAAMFest, once known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, CAAMFest is a celebration of Asian and Asian American media, food, music, culture, digital arts, and of course, film. Though re-branded with a shiny new name, this is actually the festival’s 31st anniversary of celebrating Asian culture in San Francisco. The Asian community here is as strong as you’ll find in the United States, which makes San Francisco the perfect city to hold this world-class showcase of Asian American cinema. I’m a San Francisco native, and let me tell you, the Asian community here is one of the most passionate and driven groups of people I’ve ever seen. It’s going to be a good show, and it should not be missed!

CAAMFest is all about giving new artists a platform to share their passion with the world. Though the festival has been mostly focused on the art form of film in the past, this year will see the expansion of the festival’s focus to other mediums. Local DJs, chefs, and even authors will be contributing their work to the festival as well, and I’ll be there to sample all the tasty treats and bangin’ beats to give you a taste of the expanded CAAMFest experience (and make you jealous). However, Way Too Indie is an independent film site after all, so the main focus of our coverage will be on the lineup of films this year’s festival has to offer.

Asian culture is sadly given little to no representation in Hollywood, which makes CAAMFest so important. Growing up, the only huge movie stars that sort of looked like me were…um…Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. I don’t know martial arts, and I’m American, so really, I had no one on the big screen that was truly like me. CAAMFest is a festival in which Asian American filmmakers are given a voice, and I couldn’t be more excited to experience their work.

When most people hear the term “Asian Cinema”, they think of it as a niche genre in the world of film, which simply isn’t true. The films on deck this year look to exhibit just how versatile Asian and Asian American cinema can be. The lineup looks strong, and here are just a few of the films I am looking forward to watching.

Linsanity

Director Evan Leong provides an up-close-and-personal look at Jeremy Lin, the center of the phenomenon referred to in the film’s title. A basketball player from Palo Alto, Lin had endured a tumultuous climb up the ladder in the NBA after playing collegiate ball at Harvard; he was underutilized by every team that drafted him and was never given a chance to show his true ability. This all led to a now-legendary run with the New York Knicks in February 2012 which launched Lin into superstardom. Leong shows Lin in quiet, reflective, intimate moments; a side of Lin that the world has yet to see.

Midnight’s Children

An adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s popular novel, adapted by Rushdie himself, Midnight’s Children follows Saleem Sinai, who was born at the stroke of midnight on the very day that India gained its independence from Great Britain. As he grows up, he begins to learn that this coincidence comes with a heavy burden; his actions and the fortunes and misfortunes of his life are mirrored on a greater scale in the nation of India. His literal bond with his nation is incredible, but what is even more amazing is that he is telepathically linked to other children born at the same fateful moment that he was. Director Deepa Mehta, known for her “Elements Trilogy”, collaborates with Rushdie to bring to the big screen a story that is universally adored. This is my most anticipated film of the festival.

Trailer for Midnight’s Children:

Late Summer

Yasujiro Ozu is widely regarded as one of the most gifted filmmakers in the history of the medium. Tokyo Story happens to be one of my favorite films of all time. His elegantly technical style is seemingly inimitable, but director Ernie Park’s Late Summer pays homage to the filmic master by taking elements of his films and telling a story set not in Japan, but in a black neighborhood in Tennessee. It will be interesting to see Park’s take on Ozu’s work and how he blends Eastern and Western culture.

Trailer for Late Summer:

Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movie

This presentation is not a film, but a nation-wide project in which Asian Americans contribute home videos to a growing archive in hopes to document and represent the Asian American experience. There is nothing more personal, nostalgic, naked, or honest than home movies, and Memories to Light transcends the medium of film, acting as a gateway to Asian American history. American cinema regrettably doesn’t offer much insight into Asian America, so this project is possibly the most culturally significant work at the festival.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) brings us an adaptation of the bestselling novel by Mohsin Ahmid that breaks boundaries and provides thought-provoking insight into the cultural impact of the 9/11 tragedy. Changez is a Pakistani man obsessed with the American dream; he went to Princeton, works at a firm in New York, and looks to conquer Wall Street. After the terrorist attacks, Changez’s past in his homeland begins to eclipse everything he’s worked so hard to acquire in America, including his girlfriend (Kate Hudson.) Nair is an extremely talented filmmaker, so The Reluctant Fundamentalist could be one of the best dramas at the festival.

Trailer for The Reluctant Fundamentalist:

CAAMFest 2013 Lineup

Gala Presentations:
Linsanity – Evan Jackson Leong
Midnight’s Children – Deepa Mehta
Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies

Special Presentations:
The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mira Nair
Old Romances – Royston Tan
Monkey King: Uproar in Heaven 3D – Chen Zhihong, Su Da

Comcast Narrative Competition:
Abigail Harm – Lee Isaac Chung
Dead Dad – Ken J. Adachi
Graceland – Ron Morales
Late Summer – Ernie Park
Someone I Used to Know – Nadine Truong
Sunset Stories – Ernesto Foronda, Silas Howard

Documentary Competition:
Harana – Benito Bautista
Hight Tech, Low Life – Stephen Maing
Marilou Diaz-Abaya: Filmmaker on a Voyage – Mona Lisa Yuchengco
The Mosuo Sisters – Marlo Poras
Seeking Asian Female – Debbie Lum
Seeking Haven – Hein S. Seok, Lee Hark-joon, Ko Dong-kyum
When I Walk – Jason DaSilva
Xmas Without China – Alicia Dwyer, Tom Xia

CinemAsia (International Films):
Beautiful 2012 – Kim Tae-yong, Tsai Ming-Liang, Gu Changwei, Ann Hui
Beijing Flickers – Zhang Yuan
The Cheer Ambassadors – Luke Cassaday-Dorion
Comrade Kim Goes Flying – Kim Gwant Hun, Nicholas Bonner, Anja Daelemans
Go Grandriders – Hua Tien-hao
Invoking Justice – Deepa Dhanraj
Jiseul – Muel O
The Land of Hope – Sion Sono
Mekong Hotel – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Postcards From the Zoo – Edwin
Touch of the Light – Chang Jung-chi
When Hari Got Married – Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam
When Night Falls – Ying Liang
When the Bough Breaks – Ji Dan