Friday March 5, 2004
DEKADA '70: A Look Into One Family's Decade
THE RIDE Revisits Hawaiian Roots
Anna May Wong: A Retrospective
THE ADVENTURES OF IRON PUSSY to Screen at Castro
Outtakes
DEKADA '70: A Look Into One Family's Decade
By Yvette Cuenco
The Philippines in the 1970s was very similar to the United States' Civil Rights and anti-war movements of he 1960s. Reeling from President Ferdinand Marcos' declaration of martial law in 1972, the country erupted in protests and violence, disrupting every citizen's way of life. This is the setting of Chito S. Roño's DEKADA '70. The film portrays the life of a family of seven, living in the Philippines during the 1970s.
DEKADA follows Amanda Bartolome, played by Philippine starlet Vilma Santos, struggling to cope with her role as a wife and mother of five boys amidst the chaos within her country. As she watches her children grow, Amanda finds herself re-evaluating life. Like many women confronting the changing of gender roles in the 1970s, Amanda seeks to be more than simply a wife and other. This curiosity leads to conflict with her husband, Julian (Christopher de Leon), who typifies the common middle-class Filipino man of those times who wants nothing more than his boys to be successful and his family to be safe. All this changes as their sons grow older, taking divergent paths where two join the anti-Marcos protests, another joins the U.S. military, and the youngest two remain at home.
The film utilizes the historical backdrop of the Philippines in the 1970s to show how the lives of everyday people were affected by the changes their country was undergoing. DEKADA '70 not only succeeds at portraying the struggles that many Filipino families endured in the 1970s, but through the Bartolomes, provides a representation of the strength of the human spirit.
DEKADA '70 will be screening this afternoon at the Kabuki AMC Theaters at 4 PM.
THE RIDE Revisits Hawaiian Roots
By Yvette Cuenco
The rolling waves crash against the sandy beaches of Waikiki and a professional surfer from the present-day finds himself washed up in early 1900s Hawaii. A bad dream? No. But a good history lesson for a surfer who seems to have forgotten the roots of his sport. Nathan Kurosawa's THE RIDE follows the adventures of a surfer, David, as he attempts to return to the present and makes some unlikely friends along the way.
Through David's experiences, THE RIDE chronicles the history of surfing, prior to Hawaii's becoming a tourist mecca. David surfs the virtually vacant Waikiki Beach with his friends, a group of Hawaiian beach boys who found him washed up on the beach. Among this group is Duke, or Duke Kahanamoku, the legendary Hawaiian who brought surfing to the rest of the world. Duke teaches David to surf on a wooden board and gives him life lessons of respecting the ocean and "riding the wave." The film shows an unfamiliar Hawaii, one not so easily accessible by plane or packaged deals. It is a sharp contrast to the overcrowded Waikiki Beach David surfs in the present.
Both shows for THE RIDE (today at 12:15 PM and Sunday, March 7 at 9:30 PM) are sold out.
Anna May Wong: A Retrospective
By Anna-Mae Chin
Anna May Wong was the first Asian American actor to achieve worldwide acclaim, playing lead roles in films at a time when the socio-political climate of the United States was increasingly nativist and "yellowface" commonplace in the cinema. Despite her breakthrough success, Wong's career was not immune to the norms of the day.
Inter-racial coupling was vehemently opposed and this stigma carried its way through many of Wong's films, where the flirtation of the East—Oriental, exotic, and female, and West—potent, powerful, and male, was ignited but never fully consummated.
Wong's first big break was the 1922 TOLL OF THE SEA, where she played the self-sacrificial 'Lotus Blossom' pining for her white American serviceman. Despite the stereotypical role, Wong's accomplishment as the first Asian American actor to be cast as a top-billed lead role is nevertheless a historic feat.
Hollywood was slow to change its Asian typecasting and a frustrated Wong left for Europe to pursue more complex roles. She starred in the 1929 silent masterpiece PICADILLY, playing a scullery maid who becomes an overnight dancing sensation at the Piccadilly Club in London.
Wong returned to the Unites States in 1930 to capitalize on her increasing fame and co-starred along side Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film SHANGHAI EXPRESS, for which Wong is most famous. She continued to challenge stereotypes in the 1937 film DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI, where she played an independent, daring, Asian American woman, a break from the stereotypical foreigner.
Anna May Wong remains a guiding light for Asian American actors who continue to struggle for fair representation in the film world.
The Adventures of Iron Pussy to Screen at Castro
By Audrey Ednalino
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul takes a different turn from his sublimely mesmerizing film BLISSFULLY YOURS with an outlandish musical action-mystery, complete with cross-dressing superheroine and incestuous love tragedy. Based on a short film directed by Michael Shaowanasai, THE ADVENTURES OF IRON PUSSY PART 1 continued into a third installment, fast becoming a cult favorite.
Iron Pussy (played by co-director Michael Shaowanasai) is a 7-11 clerk by day and glamorous transvestite Spy Girl by night. With the help of her (his) motorcycle taxi-driver sidekick Pew, Iron Pussy seems to thwart the efforts of evildoers without scuffing her pumps or breaking a nail. THE ADVENTURES OF IRON PUSSY deftly weaves campy comedy and melodrama into one over-the-top film.
THE ADVENTURES OF IRON PUSSY will be screening tonight at 7 PM at the Castro Theater, and again at the Pacific Film Archive on Wednesday, March 10 in Berkeley at 9 PM.
OUTTAKES
Gathered by Gary Chou & Audrey Ednalino
"Forget about Larry Flynt, I want to be the Asian American Russell Simmons and start a clothing line called Rice Pharm."
Darrell Hamamoto, director of Yellowcaust
"It [Festival]'s a chance for me to step out of my little nerd cave and feel like a rock star for a day! If I wasn't here, I'd be slaving away doing other stuff at home!
- Dino Ignacio, director of "Bad Thoughts" music video for The Skyflakes
"It's pretty amazing [to be back in San Francisco]. I love the sunsets. I knew when I was in San Francisco when I got on a bus (I was on a bus going back to my hotel) and a Hispanic woman got on the bus with her baby, and four different individuals asked if she would like their seat. And I was like, this is not LA!
Jacqueline Kim, actress from CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES and panelist for DANGEROUS TO KNOW: THE CAREER AND LEGACY OF ANNA MAY WONG
Thursday March 4, 2004
SFIAAFF Showcases Old and New Wuxia Films
Gina Kim's INVISIBLE LIGHT Shines Ominous
SFIAAFF Showcases Old and New Wuxia Films
By Audrey Ednalino
This year the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is proud to present two wuxia (swordplay) films: Zhang Yimou's HERO and King Hu's COME DRINK WITH ME.
Sold out weeks before SFIAAFF kicked off, HERO, the highly anticipated film acquired by Miramax for U.S. distribution (then [unsurprisingly] delayed), is this year's Opening Night film. Featuring an ensemble cast of Hong Kong talent (Maggie Cheung, Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Zhang Ziyi), the story links various assassins who vie to stop the King of Qin from conquering all of China in order to become emperor.
SFIAAFF will be screening a new print of Hu's COME DRINK WITH ME, a classic released in 1965 that was the inspiration for many martial arts films to come. COME DRINK WITH ME stars Cheng Peipei, who later starred in Ang Lee's CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON as Jade Fox.
HERO is screening tonight at AMC Kabuki 8 Theaters. Screening is sold out; Opening Night Gala reception is $20. COME DRINK WITH ME will be screening on Saturday, March 6 at Castro Theater at 9:15 PM.
INVISIBLE LIGHT
By Anna-Mae Chin
INVISIBLE LIGHT tells the stories of two women Gah-in and Do-hee, who occupy separate spaces but are linked by the same man and by their struggles to reclaim their bodies, their identities and their lives.
The first story deals with Gah-in, a 26 year-old Korean student studying abroad in the U.S. Alone, displaced, and unhappy with the futile affair she is having with a married man, Gah-in struggles to regain some sense of control over her unraveling life through a caustic coping mechanism: bulimia. She takes the viewer through a routine of controlling her food intake and the constant weighing of her frail body, pinching and prodding herself, fraught with insecurity. The cycle of control and surrender takes a toll on a defeated Gah-in, who struggles in isolation to reclaim her body and her life.
In the second story Do-hee, a married woman, is pregnant through her affairs with another man. Guilt- ridden, she flees to the comfort of Seoul, from the US, after a 13-year absence, only to find that Korea is now foreign to her. While smoking, drinking and purging in the local bar near the VIP motel she temporarily calls home, Do-hee contemplates abortion. She counts down the days to her RU486 abortion pill deadline. Will she abort? Will she return to her cheating husband? Her reality is brutally frank. She is isolated, displaced, longing for intimacy, and questioning her growing desires for an increasingly intangible dream of a "happy family."
INVISIBLE LIGHT is a beautiful film that intimately portrays the struggles of these women as they cope with isolation, their changing bodies and their longing for intimacy. It is quietly powerful in its approach to narrative and embraces the patience and subtlety of communication through gesture and mood.
INVISIBLE LIGHT will be screening tomorrow at 7 PM in Berkeley at the Pacific Film Archive, and Saturday, March 6 at 9:30 PM at Kabuki AMC in San Francisco.
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