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The San Diego Asian Film Festival returns in person this week, showing 130 films from 20 countries across four venues. Here’s a preview.
The pandemic has forced many of us to play it safe and stay home for the past year and a half. To celebrate the fact that we can now return to theaters, the San Diego Asian Film Festival is far from playing it safe with its film selection. Take Terminal USA.
“It’s the kind of movie you would dare to see,” said Brian Hu, the festival’s artistic director. Hu challenges the audience to dare this restored print by Jon Moritsugu
1993 film.
TERMINAL USA THEATRAILER
“PBS kind of commissioned it, but I feel like they regretted commissioning this film,” Hu said. “They wanted a series about American families with a subversive character and they hired Jon Moritsugu, who is known for making films with titles I can’t even say on the radio, Asian-Americans as this exemplary minority, or at least not offensive.
“And he really wants to show how, firstly, it is possible that they are not. But, secondly, it is also possible that you don’t want to look under the hood even under the surface of perfectly normal-looking Asian-American families.” . And there’s something so pleasant about that, even if I would never show it in my own family. “
In the documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” the filmmakers are not playing it safe when trying to document the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.
“This happened on university campuses, where protesters took over the campus and used the campus as a platform to express their grievances to the Beijing government,” Hu said.
“It’s such a strong documentary that the filmmakers are among the protesters. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. People are talking about that we might not see each other again because this might be like Tiananmen Square in Hong Kong and make sense of it.” receives.” of the courage of these filmmakers to hold on because they see that these protesters are too. So they have to be there to document everything. It’s historical and it’s an intense documentary. “
“Writing with Fire” documents a different kind of daring as it looks for journalists in India who run their own news agency.
“‘Writing with Fire’ is about these intrepid women who became journalists because they picked up the phone and found a way to get their stories out on YouTube and online. But you also get a sense of what journalism is at stake and why it’s so important. And there is a way that people in the west often look at these stories from the non-west and say that they are catching up with the liberalism of the west. But it really isn’t. Us can learn a lot from these women about what is possible in journalism and what it means to consume media and news media. “
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Then “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” questions the expectations of the narrative structure with its trio of stories about chance.
“There’s something about the way people who don’t expect to meet end up doing something like the way they dance around each other and what it says about themselves and their ability to be kind of cruel at times,” said Hu. called. “And it’s a great pleasure to see a director know how to get every ounce of drama out of unexpected directions, not in a melodramatic or scandalous way, but in a way that really addresses the moral stakes or the possibilities of tension on the Canvas comes in, that’s really masterful. “
Filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is also providing the festival with his graduation film “Drive My Car”.
The newly restored print of the 1970s melodrama “Execution in Autumn”, directed by Lee Hsing, shows still masterful storytelling.
“Lee passed away in August,” said Hu. “So I figured we really have to show part of this film now because I think Taiwanese cinema is being associated with some of those art films from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But let’s talk about what happened before the drama of ethics and family that really broadened our definitions of family. “
“Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” extends a single take into a bizarre story about a guy who notices that there is a two-minute delay between the security camera and what he sees on his computer, resulting in some time travel gimmicks leads.
“Movies often used a single take as a kind of technical stunt,” Hu said. “But there is something about the single take in one place now, especially since we were home all the time. I think it has a special meaning. And I just love to see people who make so much out of so little. We’re all stuck in our homes. We all had to improvise new kinds of joy. And this is a film that shows that in its entirety. “
Making much out of little is also the heart of “Lumpia”, a film that, according to director Patricio Ginelsa, was inspired by “El Mariachi”.
“If this movie was about a Mexican hero who used a guitar as a weapon, what would the Filipino version be? The best we could think of was about a Filipino just throwing lumpia. That’s what my brother said. And he was just kidding. And I’m going, wait a minute. There is something visually, “explained Ginelsa.
Lumpia are Filipino spring rolls.
Ginelsa shot the film with friends on an 8-millimeter camcorder for many years from the 1990s onwards.
“It became a cult hit among Filipino Americans because it spoke directly to their cultural uniqueness,” Hu said. “But from the perspective not necessarily like historical trauma, but from how, let’s have fun with it. Let’s go to the theater and celebrate through a superhero movie.”
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Hu enjoyed pointing out that Lumpia Man was an Asian-American superhero on screen BEFORE Shang Chi. Now Ginelsa and Co. have crowdfunded a sequel called “Lumpia with a Vengeance” and both will be shown at the festival. Ginelsa has a disclaimer on the films.
“There weren’t any real lumps in the movie,” he said. “We made sure that every real Lumpi was eaten right. But every time it was thrown, it was actually a fake prop.”
So check out the San Diego Asian Film Festival film buffet and enjoy some cinematic delicacies.
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