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March 14, 2007

Film Fest Fever

Well, the SF International Asian American Film Fest kicks off its 25th year tomorrow. (To learn more about the festival’s history, read Jeff Yang’s column about the fest here.) Which means I pretty much disappear for the next week, sitting in theaters.

I’m dismayed to find that some of the things I wanted to see are already sold out. So, learn a lesson from me and buy your tickets in advance. Beats waiting in the rush line.

The opening night film is Justin Lin’s Finishing the Game, a rollicking comedy spoof about the egregiously exploitative search for Bruce Lee’s stand-in after his death. Nice to see Justin return to the festival after making some big commercial movies. The opening night gala after the screening will take place at Asian Art Museum as usual.

There are lots of familiar names this year. I think that’s a good sign. It means Asian American filmmakers continue to push through to get their films made. Hopefully some of them will be able to cross over into more general releases after the film festival circuit.

Grace Lee (who made the documentary The Grace Lee Project) returns with American Zombie, which she described to me as “kind of like the Grace Lee Project, but with zombies.”

Joy Dietrich, a Korean adoptee who made a very moving short film a few years ago called Surplus, makes her feature-length debut with Tie a Yellow Ribbon, which we previewed here.

Eric Byler, who opened last year’s festival with Americanese returns with another quiet and sophisticated look at romance: Tre.

Romeo Candido, who directed Lolo’s Child, has something totally different this year: a horror film called Ang Pamana: The Inheritance.

Gene Rhee, who made the hilarious short film The Quest For Length, is screening The Trouble With Romance (a romantic comedy, duh). The cast includes Roger Fan of Better Luck Tomorrow and Jennifer Siebel, better known as Mayor Gavin Newsom’s girlfriend.

And 10 years after making Yellow, Chris Chan Lee, has finally got a new film: Undoing, a dark film about a man’s return to the L.A. underworld to confront his past. Cast includes Sung Kang (Better Luck Tomorrow, The Motel), Kelly Hu, and Russell Wong as a hitman.

And that’s just in the narrative category. I haven’t even gotten to documentaries and short films yet.

Anyway, a lot to look forward to. What are you planning to see and why?

Posted by melissa at March 14, 2007 1:10 PM