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

Afterimage, July-August, 1997 by Valerie Soe

This year's San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival was a picture of transitions, with programming reflecting some of the recent trends in independent Asian American media production. The festival also pointed out an identity crisis of sorts, as it demonstrated the difficulty in outlining a clear and cohesive definition of Asian American filmmaking.

The festival opened with a screening of the silent Chinese classic Love and Duty (1931, by Richard Poh), although it has only peripheral ties to the Asian American community Set in Shanghai, Love and Duty demonstrates a modern sensibility that reflects the Western character of the city. The film includes a riveting performance by Ruan Lingyu, one of China's most popular actresses at the time. intended to show the link between Asian and Asian American films, Love and Duty instead felt like a diversion on the path to the true heart of the festival.

Asian American filmmakers have produced a notable body of work in recent years, and the bulk of seminal films in the field have been documentaries or experimental work. This year's festival began a new trend, with the premieres of four first-time features by young Asian American directors. The directors, linked by youth and their impressive technical skills, explore themes and issues common to Asian American films and videos from years past.

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

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

Sunsets (1997, by Eric Nakamura and Michael Idemoto), also traces the exploits of a group of teens approaching adulthood. However, where Yellow strays into the realm of television melodrama, Sunsets maintains a naturalistic tone and texture throughout. Shot in grainy 16mm black and white film, with a spare, jazzy soundtrack, the film cost less than $20,000 to make. It follows the lazy, nihilistic existence of three borderline delinquents as they while away the summer in Watsonville, CA, a small farming community southeast of San Francisco. Whereas Yellow's characters only consider vandalism and theft as a last resort, Sunset's protagonists practice it as a matter of rote entertainment. Despite some of their unredeeming qualities the lead characters remain likable, due in large part to the convincing, unpretentious manner in which Nakamura and Idemoto present them. Idemoto confessed that the film's extensive use of long, single takes was in part economic, as the negative cutter charged five dollars for every edit. But the directors effectively use these languid takes to emulate the aimless redundancy of adolescent existence, redeemed only by close friendships and simple experiences.

Rea Tajiri's Strawberry Fields (1997) is perhaps the most ambitious of the four films, examining complex issues of loss, memory, family anomie and alienation, themes that Tajiri previously explored in her experimental documentary History and Memory: For Akiko arid Takashige (1991). The film is also the most technicaly accomplished of the four, with a digitally mixed soundtrack (partially lost in its premiere screening due to snafus in the projection booth) and beautiful cinematography. The protagonist is a 16-year-old Japanese American girl, a pyromaniac whose parents were interned during World War II. Although this history reverberates through the family's interactions, the girl's parents deny all reference to it. The film unrelentingly looks at the effects of miscommunication, repression, shame and setf-hatred, with all the characters living out the sins of their fathers. Despite awkwardness in some of the camera blocking and direction, Tajiri's film mixes rootless, confused characters and experimental visual and aural motifs into a thoughtful blend of familial and cultural dislocation.

The program "Cowgirl and The Man" focused on several short narratives, many by first-time directors. Jessica Yu, a recent Academy Award winner for Breathing Lessons (1996), showed a charming and quirky short, Better Late (1996), that highlights her warm and humorous style. Yuri Makino's Umeboshi (1996) is a bittersweet meditation on family relationships set in the subculture of nuclear activism, linking the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to modern-day characters and situations. Michael Arago's Silencio (1996) effectively acknowledges the damage wrought by denying one's cultural heritage, as a light-skinned Filipino man in the 1950s hides his ethnicity in order to "pass" in white society. Much of the rest of the program, however, bore the stamp of film school thesis projects -- long on gloss, short on content and, except for their mostly Asian American casts and directors, unswerving from mainstream cinematic conventions.