23rd SAN FRANCISCO 
INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL 
MARCH 10-20, 2005 IN SAN FRANCISCO, BERKELEY, AND SAN JOSE

Moving pictures from Japan and Japanese Americans, with a special look at the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and the end of the Pacific War

The 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), the largest and most prestigious showcase of movies by and about Asians and Asian Americans, offers 30 feature length and short works by Japanese and Japanese American filmmakers. This year's Festival will also offer a cinematic look at the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the end of World War II. The SFIAAFF unspools March 10-20 in San Francisco (AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres and Castro Theatre), Berkeley (Pacific Film Archive), and San Jose (Camera 12 Cinemas). For more information or tickets please telephone (415) 865-1588 or visit www.naatanet.org/festival on the Internet.

Three new features from Japan 

The Festival is pleased to present three new feature works from acclaimed Japanese filmmakers: Hideaki Anno's CUTIE HONEY, Shunji Iwai's HANA & ALICE and the North American premiere of Junji Sakamoto's OUT OF THIS WORLD. CUTIE HONEY is Anno's action comedy extravaganza, based on Go Nagai's popular '70s comic-turned-TV-anime series about a crime-fighting schoolgirl android with exploding clothes. Iwai offers an ode to adolescence with his poetic and light-hearted HANA & ALICE, which follows the clumsy love triangle between three teenagers. With his 13th feature, filmmaker Sakamoto (FACE, MY HOUSE) offers a sweeping look at the American Occupation period in Japan when chaos reined, cultures clashed, and jazz— banned as enemy music during the war—became a beacon of hope for some.

Remembering Hiroshima 60 years later

While OUT OF THIS WORLD offers a dramatic perspective from Japan during the immediate days after the end of WWII, French filmmaker Alain Resnais' 1959 masterpiece HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR, starring Eiji Okada and Emmanuelle Riva, offers a lingering, internalized look at the long shadow cast by the atomic bomb in postwar Japan. With a screenplay by Marguerite Duras, the film tells the tale of French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) who is staying in Hiroshima for a few days shooting a movie about peace. There she meets a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) with whom she has a one-night stand. Despite the fact that both of them are married they find themselves falling in love with one another. This unique specimen of the French New Wave delivers a profound and romantic meditation on how humans incorporate—by accepting with their bodies and minds—the destruction of war. The Festival is proud to screen HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR as a Special Presentation. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Festival will also offer the world premiere of Steven Okazaki's new documentary, THE MUSHROOM CLUB (see below for more details).

Films about the Japanese American experience

On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese Americans offer examinations of their own experiences during the war, in particular the American government's internment policy toward Japanese American citizens. The world premiere of Satsuki Ina's and Stephen Holsapple's FROM A SILK COCOON explores the effects of being interned on Ina's family. Ina was born in Tule Lake, her brother Kiyoshi in Topaz. FROM A SILK COCOON weaves, through documents, diaries and letters collected by her mother, the tangled skein of a woman's torn allegiance and her efforts, despite pregnancy and illness, to keep hope alive for a husband charged with sedition, and for the children who constantly asked for him. The film is preceded by Casey Peek's HIDDEN INTERNMENT: THE ART SHIBAYAMA STORY, a brief look at a little-known aspect of the internment: the forced evacuation to the United States of over 2,000 Latin Americans of Japanese descent, mostly Japanese Peruvians. Another short about the internment is John Esaki's STAND UP FOR JUSTICE screening in the "VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS AT 35" shorts program. STAND UP FOR JUSTICE is a ground-breaking film based on the story of Mexican American teenager Ralph Lazo, who, in 1941, outraged by the forced internment of his Japanese American friends, boarded a train to Manzanar to join them.

Tribute to Academy Award-winning Japanese American filmmaker Steven Okazaki

With a career spanning over 25 years, encompassing more than two dozen films and recognized by countless awards (including an Oscar and a Peabody), Steven Okazaki is one of the most celebrated and prolific documentary filmmakers working today. This Japanese American's body of work is a cornerstone of Asian American cinema, unparalleled in its depth, influence and impact, and pioneering in bringing untold stories to the screen.

On March 15 the SFIAAFF presents "AN EVENING WITH STEVEN OKAZAKI", an onstage interview with award-winning journalist and author Nguyen Qui Duc preceded by the world premiere screening of Okazaki's latest film THE MUSHROOM CLUB. In his 1982 documentary SURVIVORS, Okazaki interviewed men and women who had lived through the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2005, he returns to this subject and its many unresolved questions to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

The Festival will also screen Okazaki's first fiction film, LIVING ON TOKYO TIME. This 1987 indie hit is a winsome romantic comedy about an introverted Asian American slacker and the problems he has communicating with his new Japanese bride. The tribute is rounded out "THREE BY OKAZAKI," a trio of short docs: HUNTING TIGERS (1988), AMERICAN SONS (1994), and DAYS OF WAITING (1990), winner of the 1991 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Revival screenings of classic documentaries by Japanese American filmmakers

To celebrate its landmark 25th anniversary, NAATA, the Festival's producer, has asked Guest Programmers to select films from its past which embody the spirit, history and diversity of its work. 

Justin Lin, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker whose works include the hit BETTER LUCK TOMORROW and the influential SHOPPING FOR FANGS, chose Japanese American filmmaker Spencer Nakasako's 1995 documentary A.K.A. DON BONUS. After escaping the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Ny family struggles with resettlement in the U.S. Their lives unfold through the lens of this stirring video diary, A.K.A. DON BONUS. As 18-year-old Sokly Ny (Don Bonus) struggles to graduate from high school, his family is harassed in the housing projects, his eldest brother cannot fill a dead father’s shoes and his youngest brother ends up in a youth prison. About A.K.A DON BONUS, Lin remembers "watching it and being moved and excited to see not only a unique perspective and experience but also a style and aesthetic I had never seen before. You must remember that this was made before the reality TV craze." Emmy Award-winning A.K.A. DON BONUS returns to the Festival for a special revival screening.

Renee Tajima-Pe–a is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, scholar and film critic. Her films include: MY AMERICA... (OR HONK IF YOU LOVE BUDDHA) and the Academy Award-nominated WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? Renee Tajima-Pe–a's picks include Robert Nakamura's short film MANZANAR. MANZANAR (1971) was the first documentary to address the Japanese American internment during WWII. As Tajima-Pe–a recalls, "I was an angry teenager when I first saw MANZANAR at a community center during the mid-70s. It was a revelation. This was a time when students were so hungry to learn our heritage, we'd mimeograph anything we could scrounge up about the camps, the railroad workers, the manong, and teach each other. I never imagined we could make our own films about our own history."

Shorts from the Diaspora

To catch a glimpse of tomorrow's new talents, check out the Festival's short film programs. Works by or about Japanese Americans are scattered throughout. Included are Kimi Takesue's SUMMER OF THE SERPENT, Sasie Sealy's DANCE MANIA FANTASTIC and Yuki Nakajima's STOLEN SHADOWS, all in "DREAM DREAM REVOLUTION;" Yohei Kawamata's THE HAIRS, Steven K. Tsuchida's SPAM-KU: I WON A HAIKU CONTEST, and Kevin Inouye's THE TALE OF HAIKU JONES, all in the eclectic shorts program "HOUSE OF FLYING PANCAKES;" Tadashi H. Nakamura's YELLOW BROTHERHOOD, in the "BROTHERHOOD BEST" shorts program; and the world premiere of Kayo Hatta's (PICTURE BRIDE, SFIAAFF '95) FISHBOWL in the "FISHBOWLS AND SILENT YEARS" shorts program.

Movies about music

Movies, both short and long, about music are also on the bill. Prompted by the death of punk icon Joey Ramone in 2001, filmmaker Roddy Bogawa began a reflection on punk music and its impact on him as an artist. The result is I WAS BORN, BUT..., a sumptuously photographed, minimalist feature-length documentary which expands the portrait of a Japanese American punk rocker into a story of race, assimilation and cultural memory. Bogawa traverses personal and political history, from his formative years in Los Angeles to his life today in New York, from his parents' memories of Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor bombing to his own of New York on September 11, 2001. Fora quick fix check out the "MUSIC VIDEO ASIA" shorts program for rarely seen music videos from Lyrics Born, Polysics, Rhymester, Guitar Wolf, IQU and L'arc-en-ciel.

The SFIAAFF gratefully acknowledges its sponsors

The 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, presented by NAATA and Asia Street on International Channel is supported in part by the Asian Art Museum, Canadian Consulate Trade Office, Comcast, Grants for the Arts, Koret Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Noon, Oscar Printing, Procter & Gamble, Radisson Miyako Hotel, San Francisco Tobacco Free Project, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and Wells Fargo. NAATA is supported with major funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, runs March 10-17, 2005 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, 1881 Post Street, and the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street in San Francisco; and the Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way in Berkeley and March 18-20 at the Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second Street in San Jose. For more information, please telephone (415) 865-1588 or visit www.naatanet.org/festival on the Internet.