Hell on Frisco Bay (2005-2008 archive)

I prefer to organize my viewing choices principally around following the careers of directors who intrigue me. (I know-- how boring! I'd surely be a much more interesting cinephile if I spent as much energy following boom operators' filmographies instead.) To this end, I love a local film festival with a sense of loyalty to the directors whose films it features. Facing facts, not every film on the festival circuit makes its way to a Frisco Bay screen. (Is anyone ever going to bring La Blessure around? I guess not...) So I'm thrilled when, after seeing a terrific film at a film festival, I get a chance a year or two or four later to see the director's next film at another edition of that festival.

I haven't crunched all the numbers on this, but my sense is that the SF International Asian-American Film Festival is currently the best in town at consistently showcasing new work by directors whose films have been programmed there before. As evidenced in the festival's newly-announced line-up, this loyalty applies to various sections of the festival; this year's Narrative Competition section, for example, brings local filmmaker Richard Wong back with Option 3. Two years ago, he had the biggest hit of the festival with his debut Colma: the Musical, which will be reprised this year at a special sing-a-long screening at the Kabuki Theatre. Gina Kim, whose Invisible Light screened the festival in 2004, returns with her latest Never Forever. In the Documentary Showcase section, I'm excited to see that Cambodia's greatest documenter Rithy Panh is back with Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers, his fourth film in five SFIAAFFs.

But the festival section where this trend is most notably evident to this observer is in the International Showcase section. This is usually the section where I focus most of my attention, and this year nearly half of the 15 films programmed come from directors whose films have been personal highlights of previous SFIAAFFs. Let me quickly look at these one-by-one:

881, which looks to put the "Sing" back into Singapore.
Director: Royston Tan, whose unflinching, gripping 15 played the festival in 2004.

Desert Dream, a family drama featuring North Koreans in Mongolia.
Director: Zhang Lu, whose heartbreaking 2006 festival film Grain in Ear suggests an affinity for putting Korean characters in spare, hostile environments outside their homeland.

Flight of the Red Balloon, a tribute to Albert Lamorisse's classic short the Red Balloon (which, to prepare you if you've never seen it, will play the PFA March 8th)
Director: Hou Hsaio-Hsien, the master Taiwanese filmmaker whose excursion to Tokyo Café Lumiere was a highlight of the 2006 SFIAAFF. This Paris-set film featuring Juliette Binoche marks Hou's first time working outside of Asia.

A Gentle Breeze in the Village, with its rural, teenage milieu, is from its program description bringing to mind certain films of the great Japanese auteur Mikio Naruse.
Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita, the man behind one of my very favorite SFIAAFF films, the 2006 selection Linda Linda Linda.

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, a strange-sounding romance between a kleptomaniac and a self-identified cyborg.
Director: Park Chan-wook, one of South Korea's hottest auteurs going right now. Truthfully, his 2005 SFIAAFF selection Oldboy was my own least favorite of Park's so-called "Vengeance trilogy", but now that he's finished with that project I'm very interested in what kind of elaborate camerawork and color schemes he'll use to showcase his critiques and characterizations next.

Three Days to Forever, described in the program mini-guide as a "controversial coming-of-age story."
Director: Riri Riza, whose work I last sampled with the 2003 SFIAAFF selection Eliana, Eliana, still one of the best Indonesian films I've encountered.

The Unseeable, a ghost story said to be a tribute to classic Hollywood takes on the supernatural.
Director: Wisit Sasanatieng, whose second film Citizen Dog played the SFIAAFF about a year prior to last year's long-awaited theatrical release of his debut Tears of the Black Tiger. The Unseeable is not expected to be as candy-colored as these previous films, but I've been hotly anticipating a chance to check out Wisit's new direction for over a year now.

There's a lot more to anticipate, but I would be remiss in ending this post without mentioning two more established auteurs whose films are to be featured at the 2008 SFIAAFF. Wayne Wang, whose Chan is Missing is probably the most-frequently-cited early success of the Asian-American filmmaking movement, will see his two new films a Thousand Years of Good Prayers and the Princess of Nebraska play the festival, and will also be on-hand for an on-stage conversation March 15th. Two of his previous films, the Joy Luck Club and Life Is Cheap...But Toilet Paper is Expensive will complete the Wang spotlight.

Much more bittersweet is the tribute to Edward Yang, whose untimely death last year at age 59 has inspired a touring retrospective of his films. SFIAAFF has selected three of them to play: the Terrorizer, a Brighter Summer Day, and his final masterpiece Yi Yi: a One and a Two. Yi Yi is the only one of his films I've seen before, but its beautiful universality convinces me that this tribute is likely to be the highlight of the festival for anyone who samples it. When voting for it in a fairly recent poll of the greatest foreign-language films of all time, I predicted that Yi Yi would go down in history as one of the great last films of all time, and I'm planning to reconfirm that claim with a big-screen viewing at the Pacific Film Archive on March 20th.

Speaking of the PFA (and now we're briefly going to move away from SFIAAFF talk, just because I can't resist scoops), though the new March-April calendar is not online or available in print yet, I couldn't help but notice something while attending a screening of Godard's Weekend last night. Before the film the venue showed slides advertising the upcoming programs to expect over the next couple of months: an artist-in-residence for Pedro Costa will begin March 1 (hot on the heels of the Terence Davies residency you probably already know about), retrospectives for both Orson Welles and Frank Tashlin (just as I was starting to sense a slight turn away from classic-era Hollywood in the PFA programs, they disprove my hunch), a series of films relating to the events of 1968 in Europe (most likely a touring version of this series), and of course the 51st SF International Film Festival, which runs at the PFA and several other venues April 24-May 8th.

No SFIFF films playing the PFA have been announced yet, but the festival has just announced the opening night film at the Castro: Catherine Breillat's the Last Mistress. SFIFF's annual silent-film/rock-star pairing has been revealed to be Paul Wegener's The Golem scored by Black Francis a.k.a. Frank Black a.k.a. frontman for the Pixies. This event will be held on April 25th, also at the Castro. Finally, the festival's KinoTek spotlight will bring performance artists Chi-wang Yang, Miwa Matreyek and Anna Oxygen to Kanbar Hall May 1st.

Anyway, back to the SF International Asian American Film Festival. Anything else in particular in their program that I shouldn't overlook?