Cinemism

This year the AAIFF ’09 is leaner and more focused as a condition of our new economic reality. However, it is also an experiment on the viability of a community-minded event—spread by word of mouth and quality selections rather than by star filled premieres or flashy, usually forgettable, narrative bombs. The showcase will include 14 feature films and 50 short films during the weekend of July 23 – 26, 2009.

Some of the most unexpected gems are on the short films programs. Themes bound to social justice, Asian identity, and immigration politics are rife. However, the festival doesn’t take itself too seriously. Moments of levity arise when least expected, and the scant running time of most films refutes any sullen didactism. The programmers have succeeded in creating a balance which alights from tragedy to hilarity within scant frames. Minus the gore and sci-fi garnish of the just finished New York Asian Film Festival, AAIFF is a calmer foray into intensely personal stories with real stakes. Some of the directors and screenwriters call America home, but their worldview is dispersed far and wide.

Opening night of the festival starts with Ivy Ho’s reverse chronological narrative, Claustrophobia. Ho is a veteran Hong Kong screenwriter whose directorial debut trowels in the turmoil created by a clandestine work affair. Following is the much ballyhooed Sundance premierer, Paper Heart. Charlyne Yi of Knocked Up notoriety, steers this faux documentary in a search for true love. Michael Cera also shows up as …himself?

The second night places displacement on center stage. Some of the highlights include the shorts program Home is Where the Heart Is. As the name clearly implies, we witness new immigrants struggle with their adopted homes while trying to retain their cultural linkages. The comedy Karma Calling looks at Indian immigrants creating their own American unreality and Formosa Betrayed drops a green FBI agent in Taiwan where complex Chinese nationalist politics, U.S. interests, and organized crime converge dangerously.

One of the standouts is Hubad. Based on the play by the same name, Mark Gary and Denisa Reyes have aggressively adapted it for the screen. On first glance it is seemingly an all too familiar work of meta-fiction about the rehearsals for the play and the parodic explorations of sex from which the play draws its comedy. However, as the layers of pretense are peeled away, we are slowly exposed to the sexual repression supposedly endemic to Filipino society.

The lead characters Carmen and Delfino, unflinchingly manifested by Irma Adlawan and Nonie Buencamino, inhabit their characters wholly and the line between fiction and reality never materializes. At moments, the film hazily drifts into documentary, as though the audience is witnessing real people slowly self-destruct. As they start a poorly concealed affair, the actors brazenly jeopardize their perfectly curated existences. Ironically, the play becomes the only space of solace as their significant others begin to reject them. The one false note is the play’s director, Andre. His enfant terrible outbursts over Carmen’s inability to emote sexually and wounded pride over asking his father for financial help to continue the play seem incongruous. These moments are strained at best.

The third night of the festival presents a slew of short film programs including Youth Shorts; Love, Lust, and Desire; and Here…Look at Me. Life on the Edge, another series of four short films consists solely of documentaries about social inequities past and present. Crossing Midnight draws attention to the vital work being done at the Mae Tao clinic on the Thailand/Burma border. Started twenty years ago by Dr. Cynthia Maung, the clinic is witness to the tragic repercussions of the oppressive SPDC Burmese government. Ethnic refugees from the Eastern region face constant threat from landmines, increased infant mortality rates, and psychological torment. The focus on children is a hopeful nod to the future, but they will no doubt carry the scars inherent with dislocation. This documentary sheds light on an area in the world that we only get fleeting images of in the news or a Hollywood treatment of in the last Rambo film.

Another equally oppressive side of the country is explored in No Joke Burma. The camera gapes at a flooded street in Mandalay, Burma and we leisurely float into a flooded house for a most inauspicious introduction to the Moustache Brothers, a local comedy troupe. If this is not strange enough, it is revealed later that they served almost six years in prison for telling jokes. However, in a military dictatorship of this scope they probably got off easy. The broken English routines, footage of sweaty tourists watching the family perform, and one brother’s fascination with the Dictionary of American Slang make for a hallucinatory introduction to this microcosm of defiance.

Story of a BusinessWoman is an intimate portrayal of a 28 year old entrepreneur in Morioka City, in Northern Japan. The director, Mikiko Sasaki, exposes the complex nature of sex and power in the business world by letting the camera roam freely. She captures unguarded interactions that will make some blanch. She follows her childhood friend, Michiko, the CEO of a small real estate firm on the verge of growing its clientele and reputation. Michiko excels in this male-dominated society by becoming more like a man. At one point she equates risk-taking with male curiosity and chastises her female counterparts for their “safety.” This moment might be uncomfortable perhaps for a liberal audience but speaks volumes about Japan. Mikiko still deals with casual sexism and a lack of respect, but she perseveres regardless through a deft balance of delusion and practiced ignorance. Scenes in which male colleagues unselfconsciously expose themselves at a business conference party show how far there is to go.

The best film of the bunch is A Song for Ourselves. It begins at a memorial for Chris Iijima, a man I had never heard of before, but who I now want to know everything about. During the turmoil of the late 60’s/70’s he was a leader in the Asian-American community advocating for equal rights and self-affirmation. With his guitar and transcendent lyrics Chris inverted stereotypes and made people listen. As we follow him through middle age and sickness, we witness a son, a teacher, a lawyer, a father, and a husband who always advocated for those with no voice. As the third installment of a historical document of early Asian American socio-political advances, director Tadashi Nakamura shows an expert hand at pacing, slowly drawing the audience into this movement hidden in plain sight.

Also the centerpiece film for the night is Children of Invention, which has been handily racking up awards and praise on the indie festival circuit for most of this year. No small part of this is due to its timeliness. The impasse that separates an immigrant mother from her two young children is a classic pyramid scheme. The director, Tze Chun, definitely expresses some disdain over these get rich schemes, but also recognizes them as a part of the defective American Dream.

I can’t say that watching this film was an enjoyable experience, but it was a poignant one. Following the two young children Raymond and Tina as they roam around Boston, while their mom is being held for questioning in the scheme, is as close to cinematic purity as one is likely to see this year. The two young actors are free of the child actor tics like cloying sentimentality or broad over-acting. They emote, I feel (I even cry). It is a rather equal relationship which doesn’t condescend to the audience and makes the characters feel all the more present and their situation more dire. Drawn faces and slumped shoulders tell a story much more nuanced than dialogue could ever approximate. Chris Teague’s cinematography is deceptively simple. Moments like the Sold sign on the lawn of their old house, or a dream sequence involving spaghetti spinners, or a slice of pepperoni pizza being eaten on the street resonate as seminal moments in the lives of these youngsters. The framing captures the intimacy of their cut-out existence, cut–out from society, from normality, from reality. They will never forget this time, and nor will we.

The final night of the festival is a celebration. Light hearted films counter some of the more serious fare and audiences will be encouraged to laugh liberally. The Fun and Fantasy shorts are perfectly frivolous distractions. The Call Center takes the documentary camera conceit of The Office to a call center in India. Fake American accents, clueless telephone reps, and over-ambitious bosses make for a hilarious skewering of our fractured global village.

The mockumentary fervor continues with The Humberville Poetry Slam. The misplaced earnestness of Liberty Fu, who treats slam poetry as though it were an Olympic sport, is offset by the dilettante aspirations of a ditsy hairdresser, an eager slacker, an awkward lawyer, and a perpetually confused carpenter. However, in this dead-end town all this aspiration takes on the patina of absolute ludicrousness. When they start practicing for the Nationals in a school classroom and Liberty begins teaching the hairdresser the appropriate sing-songy rhythm for correct slam poetry, all my pretense as a critical reviewer dissipated, and I don’t recall laughing so much and for so long in recent memory. Watch it!!!

A more serious offering is Walking While Sleeping. A plot description would not serve this hypnotic and elliptical work. A cat, a girl, a man, and a stranger are alternately voice over narrator, love interest, combatant, or silent observer. The place is ambivalent, the time meaningless. The consistent tone and mood is what makes this story flow, to where we are never told, but it is a trip I was spellbound by.

The closing film this year is Fruit Fly. It is unlike anything else you will see in a theater I guarantee. Here are just a few reasons why: insanely catchy pop tunes that will swim in your head relentlessly for days after viewing; dazzling, funny special effects that reimagine the San Francisco skyline as an electronic game board, Asian characters devoid of clichéd stereotypes, and an infectious sense of freedom which enlivens everything from the dialogue to the title sequence.

H.P. Mendoza has crafted a pitch perfect (literally) homage to post-college bravura. The lead, a Filipino-American named Bethesda (L.A. Renigen) is on a sojourn to finish her one-woman play about the search for her biological parents. En route she realizes that she is a fag hag, criminally horny, and a pretty vulnerable performer. Another great new talent is Mike Curtis, affectionately called “Windy” in the film. His sardonic retorts to Bethesda’s dramatic outbursts are memorable, but it’s his peeking sensitivity which creates a real personality. Watch this film with a big group. It has that sort of energy that can only be dissipated by bantering back and forth and talking to the screen. You will leave just a little lighter on your feet.

Locations:
Clearview Chelsea Cinemas, 260 West 23rd Street
School of Visual Arts Theater, 333 West 23rd Street
Museum Of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street

Tickets for the festival can be purchased here.

Filed under: A Song for Ourselves, Children of Invention, Fruit Fly, Hubad, No Joke Burma, The Asian American International Film Festival, The Call Center, The Humberville Poetry Slam, Walking While Sleeping