Members of the list living in the DC area may want to attend the Asian American International Film Festival. Opening night features FRESH KILL, and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang and scriptwriter Jessica Hagedorn will be available to answer questions and discuss the film; Hoff Theatre, University of Maryland Stamp Student Union, 7PM. Reception follows. For ticket prices and information on other events (most are FREE), contact [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Visit the festival web page at http://www.wam.umd.edu/~hyacinth/ Here is a brief essay on the festival program: 1996 ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL A Tour by Gina Marchetti This year the Asian American International Film Festival of Washington, DC celebrates its fifteenth anniversary. From its inception, it has been dedicated to bringing the best of current film and video produced by Asian and Asian American artists to the DC area. This showcase has enabled the greater Washington area audience to see these film and video artists works grouped together. This has been of critical importance. While Asian and Asian American film/videomakers contribute to world film culture from a wide variety of national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, political, and cultural cinema traditions, the opportunity to view works of the Pacific Rim together regularly is vital to further an understanding of the accomplishments and contributions these artists make internationally. Thus, this festival has always brought the global to local screens. In doing so, it helps viewers locate the local Asian American community within the world community. This theme is particularly in evidence this year as the festival traces the interconnections of Asian American and global film culture with features and short films from around the world that look at the experience of being Asian outside of Asia or of being displaced and Other within Asia. To cite one example, BONTOC EULOGY (Marlon E. Fuentes) deals with displaced Philippine Islanders brought to the United States to be exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair. The film uses the fictionalized memoir to draw the viewer into its meticulously researched evocation of the villagers lives at the Worlds Fair. However, it also implicates the film viewers by questioning their own investment in the visual politics of looking at the Asian native as silent and without a personal history. The image must be excavated through the voice-over narration of a Philippine American descendant of the people depicted in order to get at the tragedy of this apparently innocent display of the primitive in 1904. In showing this neglected tale of the connections between these Asians on display in America and the lives of Asian Americans today, BONTOC EULOGY begins to bridge an important gap in understanding the complex cultural experiences of Asian Americans in national and international arenas. At the Worlds Fair, Asians become the objects of a global gaze, and, through the course of the films critique of this gaze, a new understanding of the power of seeing, saying, and being seen within an international context begins to emerge. Following this theme, the opening night program of FRESH KILL (Shu Lea Cheang and Jessica Hagedorn) paints a picture of a multicultural New York City in which a multiracial lesbian couple raises a daughter who combines South Asian, Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Chinese ethnic heritage and becomes the cynosure of a plot that investigates the complex, global relationships between transnational capitalism and the local community. FRESH KILL offers both a critique of the contemporary globalized economy as well as a vision of a transcultural, metropolitan future in which racism, sexism, and homophobia have given way to a genuinely diverse society. Distopic and utopic simultaneously, this film experiments with ideas of social change by providing a vivid picture of what Asian American life is like and could be like within a global society that has broken with commonly accepted categories of difference. (See the essay by Seth Silberman in this catalogue for more on this significant Asian American feature film.) Throughout the festival, films are grouped to highlight this dialectic between the local and the global. The two special festivals within the festival look at the diaspora of the Arabs and the Vietnamese in the wake of war and national reconfigurations in the Middle East and Indochina. Looking at the Arab and Vietnamese selections underscores the importance of thinking of Asian and Asian American film culture as global in scope and impact. Many of the Arab films featured at the festival take a satiric look at the ways in which Arabs have been viewed by the European and American media throughout the years. Ali Baba, Valentinos THE SHIEK, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, and even Elvis in Hollywoods harem pop up along with Gulf War reportage and images of the ruins of Beirut. The Arab feature ONCE UPON A TIME: BEIRUT takes a fantastical tour through the history of Beirut as seen by both Western and Arab commercial film cultures, with two cosmopolitan young women as tour guides. ALI BABA: HOLLYWOOD AND PARIS AT THEIR BEST (Yasmina Bouziane) and TEACH ME both use found footage and popular music to take a critical look at Arabs in the worlds imagination. The experimental documentaries MISSING LEBANESE WARS and INTRODUCTION TO THE END OF AN ARGUMENT give a perspective on the politics of the Middle East sorely neglected by the international media. The documentary features A DREAM OF JUSTICE AND FREEDOM and JERUSALEM: OCCUPATION SET IN STONE bring to the Washington community critical information on Palestine and the on-going peace process in Israel. (All of these important works in this special focus segment of the festival are discussed in more detail in another essay in the catalogue.) LAND OF SORROW (Ha Thuc Can), a feature produced during the last days before the fall of Saigon in 1975, shows a Vietnamese view of the war generally absent from American screens. Attempting to create a climate for reconciliation by showing the suffering of all sides during the war, the film was banned after 1975 and, unfortunately, has only had limited screenings in Europe and the United States since then. The festival is fortunate to be able to bring this neglected film to a wider audience. The other films in the series look at the legacy of the war and the displacement of many Vietnamese in its aftermath from a number of different perspectives. The locally produced documentary, WHO WE ARE: VIETNAMESE IN AMERICA (News Channel 8), provides an excellent introduction to the experiences of many Vietnamese Americans in the Washington, Maryland, Virginia community. The experimental shorts, CYCLO (M. Trinh Nguyen), RAINBATHERS (Phong Nguyen), and the Laotian American LETTER BACK HOME (Nith Lacroix) all use cutting edge film and video techniques to investigate the emerging identities of Indochinese Americans. They reflect the experiences of a generation who spent their childhood in Indochina and came of age in the United States. The fiction feature BASTARDS (Loc Do) and the short drama SAIGON, I LOVE YOU (Timothy Bui) also reflect the experiences of this generation as young men negotiate the temptations of crime within a society ignorant of their sense of displacement and alienation. The festivals closing night feature, A VIETNAM LEGEND (Charlie Nguyen), takes the viewer on a whirlwind trip through Vietnams mythic path. With superb martial artistry and a classic plot, this Asian American feature reminds its audience of the rich linguistic, cultural and artistic traditions that give it its special place within international film history. (See my essay in this catalogue for more on this feature.) For martial arts fans, there will also be an event devoted to the power of the samurai mythos in the Asian American imagination. RETURN OF THE SUN DEVIL (Steven Ayromlooi and Peter Chung) and JIROHACHI(Tsukuru Imanishi) are short films that testify to the enduring power of the samurai within international film culture. See the essay by Joseph Schaub in this catalogue for more on these films and the samurai genre.) The wandering ronin, the samurai without a master, still evokes a pathos that transcends national boundaries and traditions. Indeed, themes of global displacements and diasporic alienation surface throughout the festival. The prospect of Hong Kongs future after 1997 and Macaos future after 1999 becomes text and subtext for the films dealing with contemporary global Chinese culture. The personal documentary AH MINGS MACAO directly treats the impact the change-over in 1999 will have on various segments of Macaos population. The popular comedy/melodrama SUMMER SNOW (Ann Hui) looks at a contemporary Hong Kong family as it faces the challenge of an elderly relatives debilitating senility. Although discussions of 1997 are only a minor subtext within the narrative, the story of the displaced seniors WWII war record highlights the fact that he is himself an exiled member of a global Chinese community, part of the old order, while his daughter-in-law represents the new, professional woman of a transnational, commercial, Chinese, cosmopolitan culture, and the challenges it provides. The Canadian short documentary THESE SHOES WERENT MADE FOR WALKING (Paul Lee) examines four generations of women in a Chinese family that has made many complex global crossings throughout the years, and the experimental short SOY MILK (Ava Wang) evokes the pain of an older generation of uprooted Chinese women. CROSSINGS (Evans Chan, director of TO LIV(E)) provides a complex picture of the global Chinese as the narrative explores a series of crossings from Hong Kong to New York, from innocence to corruption, from sanity to madness, and from life to death. Chans evocation of lives in-between cultures, genders, classes, and nations places it among the most ambitious meditations on contemporary Hong Kong to be produced to date. MEE POK MAN (Eric Khoo) takes a different look at global Chinese displacement as it tells its story about the relationship between a simple, lonely noodle chef and a young prostitute who dreams of emigrating from Singapore and going to the West. This experimental feature from the newly emerging film industry of Singapore provides a provocative look at the seamier side of that countrys commercial culture. Another experimental feature, THE PEOPLE IN WHITE (Yong-kyun Bae) by the celebrated director of WHY DID BODHIDHARMA GO EAST?, puts its shattered protagonist in a series of devastated landscapes to look at the fragmentation of contemporary Korean society. Claiming to be a Korean American mental patient recently released from an asylum in the United States, the film explores the fundamental impact the American presence has had on Korean society in the South since the Korean War. It tells a very personal story of loss and displacement on a global scale. This feeling of personal alienation and desire to examine and reconstruct a sense of identity also provides the impetus for the experimental video documentary, WHOS GOING TO PAY FOR THESE DONUTS ANYWAY? (Janice Tanaka). This video uses the very personal story of a daughters attempt to find and develop a relationship with an estranged, mentally ill father to take a very close and critical look at the continuing suffering of Japanese Americans victimized by their Internment during WWII. Like THE PEOPLE IN WHITE, this video uses the fragmented lives of its protagonists to place the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans at the hands of the force of the United States government in a critical perspective. The short films AMERICAN FISH (Jesse Wine) and DRINKING TEA (Philip Kan Gotanda) also closely examine this generation of Japanese Americans victimized by the Internment. Family tensions, personal revelations, and cultural specifics link many of the short programs at this years festival. NORMAL DEVIATE BEHAVIOR (Adam Chin and John Voltz), BO SOOT (S. Yin You), ALIENATIONS OF A MOTHER TONGUE, and KILL KIMONO (Lisette Marie Flanary) all deal with explorations of self through the construction of a sexual identity within a larger, largely racist American society. South Asian traditions of marriage, sexuality, gender expectations and womens roles are explored in a series of short films, including JUNKY PUNKY GIRLZ (Nisha Ganatra), THE TEST (Tanuja D. Desai), A FAMILY BUSINESS (Avie Luthra), and MY LIFE AS A POSTER (Shashwati Talukdar). Many of the other shorts featured throughout the festival deal with the problem of coming of age as an Asian American in the United States today, including BY THE THINNEST ROOT (Richard Kim) in which a young Korean man searches for his identity with a pair of chopsticks and the animated PEEK A BOO which provides a fanciful evocation of childhood. Other shorts explore sexual awakenings, including DOUG IS THE ONE and BITTER WHILE I WAIT, about the disappointments of young love. Several shorts look at the particular challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered Asian Americans, including FOREVER JIMMY and PLAYING IN THE SAND, discussed in a separate essay in this catalogue. A very different look at the maturation process can be found in THE RIVER CHAO PHRAYA, a fiction feature produced in Thailand, that looks at the exploits of two young boys who try to help their impoverished mother by going to the city to make their fortune as rat meat merchants. This years festival also pays a special tribute to the contribution women have made to the global visibility of Asia on the screen. A program of short films about Philippine women highlights the prominent place of women within Philippine society and their international visibility. The award-winning documentary SPIRITS RISING (Ramona Diaz) looks at Corazon Aquinos Peoples Power revolution and the women who helped make the overthrow of the Marcos regime a reality. Other short films make by Philippine women, including DESCANSOS (Corina Millado), ANG BABAE KAPAG NAG-IISA SA MAYNILA (Maria Victoria Avic Ilagan), and ASONG SIMBAHAN (Sari Taissa Lluch Dalena), look at the tensions between traditional gender roles and the dramatic changes occurring in Philippine society today. The feature documentary WHEN MOTHER COMES HOME FOR CHRISTMAS (Nilita Vachani) looks at the life of a domestic worker from Sri Lanka who works in Greece. This film puts a human face on the international domestic worker who straddles languages, cultures, and customs for minimal rewards. Given womens increasing visibility in the international labor force, this documentary provides a needed critical perspective on womens role in transnational domestic work. Looking at this years festival as part of a fifteen year history of Asian American Arts and Medias commitment to bringing current film and video work to the attention of the Washington, DC community, the undeniable fact of the complex interconnections between the international and the national, between the global and the local, and between the individual and the world comes strikingly to the fore. While these links may often seem vague and distant, they surface in all their concrete specificity when media artists bring them to the screens. This festival brings them to screens near you, so please take the opportunity to tour the world and tour your neighborhood by looking at Asia and Asian America on your local cinema screens. Gina MARCHETTI Email:[log in to unmask] (gm9) Phone:301-405-6253 ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]