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

Spotlight on local filmmaking luminary Steven Okazaki, 
plus world premiere of his latest doc THE MUSHROOM CLUB

The 23rd San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is proud to spotlight Oscar-winning Bay Area filmmaker Steven Okazaki. 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).

With a career spanning over 25 years, encompassing more than a 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. His 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. Historical PBS documentaries, gritty HBO-funded cinema vŽritŽ works, and Sundance-hit independent feature narratives: Steven Okazaki's career has been one of remarkable range and accomplishments.

AN EVENING WITH STEVEN OKAZAKI

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, Steven 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 MUSHROOM CLUB includes interviews with a 90-year-old survivor who collects the melted glass and metal that still washes ashore in Hiroshima, and members of "The Mushroom Club," a support group created for children born with defects caused by nuclear contamination.

Revival screening of LIVING ON TOKYO TIME

The Festival will also be screening, on March 16, Steve Okazaki's LIVING ON TOKYO TIME. Long before the term "slacker" entered the national vocabulary, there was the 1987 indie hit LIVING IN TOKYO TIME. Okazaki's first fiction film is a winsome romantic comedy about Ken, an introverted Asian American garage-band guitarist, involved with Kyoko, a Japanese girl whose expired visa won't halt her desire to remain in the U.S. Despite his Japanese heritage and her diligent efforts to learn English, the two can barely communicate before they've tied the knot. The hilarious love-and-marriage advice Ken gets from his rocker friends is mainly based on the damage women have wreaked on famous musicians or on bizarre interpretations of pop songs.

THREE BY OKAZAKI, a trio of rarely screened short documentaries

The tribute is rounded out on March 13 by "THREE BY OKAZAKI," a trio of short documentaries. From the zany streets of Tokyo to the parched landscape of Wyoming, Okazaki demonstrates a tremendous range in style, subject and setting. But each film bears a distinctly Asian American perspective, always striving to break down stereotypes and to reveal the not-so-simple truth beneath the surface. HUNTING TIGERS (1988) was supposed to be a documentary about Kenzaburo Oe—one of Japan’s great contemporary writers—but instead, after Oe laments that Japanese youths are "spoiled, unoriginal, too affluent and too influenced by Western culture," it becomes a lively portrait of Tokyo's underground performance artists. In AMERICAN SONS (1994), part documentary and part Brechtian performance, four actors tell stories of bigotry, hate and violence, all based on interviews with Asian Americans throughout the United States. DAYS OF WAITING (1990), winner of the 1991 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, tells the remarkable story of artist Estelle Ishigo, a Caucasian woman who refused to be separated from her Japanese American husband during the forced internment in 1942.

A biography of filmmaker Steven Okazaki

Born in Venice, California. Okazaki's first feature documentary, SURVIVORS, gave voice to Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, and laid the foundation for his groundbreaking collection of work exploring Japanese American history. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985 for UNFINISHED BUSINESS, which chronicled the challenge to the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and won an Oscar in 1991 for DAYS OF WAITING, the story of artist Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians to be interned during this period. His feature narrative film LIVING ON TOKYO TIME premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1987. Over the past decade, Okazaki has shifted his focus to people and lives torn apart by AIDS and drug abuse. His short film ALONE TOGETHER: YOUNG ADULTS LIVING WITH HIV was honored with an UNESCO Award in 1995, and the critically lauded BLACK TAR HEROIN: THE DARK END OF THE STREET was nominated for an Emmy in 1999. Steven Okazaki is married to author-journalist Peggy Orenstein and lives in Berkeley.

Filmography: 
A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-s (1976)
A Little Joke (1978)
Survivors (1982)
Unfinished Business (1985)
Living On Tokyo Time (1987)
Hunting Tigers (1988) 
Days of Waiting (1990)
Troubled Paradise (1992)
The Lisa Theory (1993)
American Sons (1994)
Alone Together: Young Adults Living with HIV (1995)
Life The Dark Side of the Street (1999)
The Mushroom Club (2005)
Rehab (2005)

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.