Programmer Grady Hendrix points to film such as MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD as a different kind of summer fare
NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
June 25 – July 8
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.subwaycinema.com
Since 2002, the New York Asian Film Festival has introduced city cineastes to more than 220 mainstream, avant-garde, and cutting-edge films from Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Asian nations, many of the selections North American premieres. Initially shown at Anthology Film Archives, the festival moves uptown this year, holding screenings at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater from June 25 through July 8, in addition to weekend midnight screenings at the IFC Center and the overlapping Japan Cuts series at the Japan Society (July 1-16). The NYAFF was cofounded by Grady Hendrix, who runs Subway Cinema, a group dedicated to spreading the many wonders of Asian films, from low-budget bloodbaths to touching romantic comedies, from shoot-’em-up gangster movies to gory zombie tales, from campy musicals to martial arts and samurai epics.
This year’s festival includes a very special opening night, honoring Huang Bo (COW, CRAZY RACER) with the Rising Star of Asia Award, Simon Yam (ECHOES OF THE RAINBOW, STORM WARRIORS) with the Star Asia Award, and Sammo Hung (IP MAN 2, EASTERN CONDORS) with the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award. In the midst of a publicity blitz for the festival, Hendrix, who is well known for the colorful outfits he wears, chatted via email with twi-ny about the 2010 NYAFF.
twi-ny: What is it about Asian films that so drives you? Did you have a moment of epiphany watching a specific movie?
Grady Hendrix: This gets a two-part answer. The four of us who run the festival [Hendrix, Goran Topalovic, Daniel Craft, and Marc Walkow] come to Asian movies in different ways, but for me it was sitting in the Music Palace down in Chinatown back in 1993 taking in a double feature of ALWAYS BE THE WINNER and LOVE ON DELIVERY. It was while watching a man dressed as Garfield defeat a karate master with pure stupidity that I fell in love with Hong Kong movies, and that was the gateway drug that led me everywhere else.
But for all of us, the reason we’re so devoted to Asian movies is the same: We’re bored. This summer, the big movies coming out of Hollywood are movies like MARMADUKE, but if you’re willing to read subtitles, there are dozens of amazing movies from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and China. Folks complain that they have to watch endless sequels and disappointing remakes from Hollywood, but over at our festival summer viewing is all about giant pigs holding Korean villages in their porky grip of terror, flying kung fu masters beating each other up with ultimate weapons made of the spinal columns of dead gods, fizzy-as-champagne romantic comedies from China starring Zhang Ziyi, amazing new flicks from Jackie Chan, masked Mexican wrestler movies from Japan, and breakdancing action films from Thailand. If you’re happy watching Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz pretend to fall in love, then great. If you want something a little more fun than that, then you should try a little of what we’re smoking.
Jackie Chan gets all serious for New York Asian Film Festival at Lincoln Center
twi-ny: Five years ago you wrote in Slate, “If you’re thinking of running a film festival: don’t. It will ruin your life.” This year the NYAFF graduates to Lincoln Center, from its early days at Anthology Film Archives. Do you still feel that running a film festival will ruin your life? Did you handle anything different because the festival will be held at the prestigious Walter Reade Theater?
GH: Doing this festival still ruins my life. In fact, at this point I think it’s too late for me and my life has been ruined beyond repair. The fact is, the four of us who run the New York Asian Film Festival are intensely passionate about what we do, to the point of being deranged. Even when we outsource some of the work, we still wind up pushing our designers to do better, we bust our butts to make sure our fliers and programs get to absolutely everywhere possible even if we wind up having to do it ourselves, we really care about our audience, and we have to make sure that every screening is as fun as humanly possible. Being at the Walter Reade hasn’t changed that. It hasn’t changed our programming, either. Movies like DOMAN SEMAN and MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD are going to hurt the brains of people who are used to “A Pleasant Jaunt Through Lithuanian Cinema.”
twi-ny: You’re renowned for your choice of wardrobe at screenings. Will the move to Lincoln Center affect what you will wear in any way?
GH: This year it’s more about what we won’t be wearing rather than what we will. Right now I’m sizing bodystockings in order to pick the one that will induce maximum discomfort in the audience, and expect more bare butts than ever during MUTANT GIRLS SQUAD screenings.
Roberto Hernández and Geoffrey Smith’s harrowingly frustrating documentary is precisely the type of true story that explains why the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, and the Human Rights Watch organization itself, unfortunately needs to exist. Part of the Accountability and Justice section of the festival and chosen as the closing night film, PRESUMED GUILTY details the plight of Toño Zuniga, a young man arrested in Mexico City in December 2005 for a murder he did not commit and, despite all the evidence supporting his innocence — and even more important, no evidence proving his guilt — remains locked up, facing a long sentence. PRESUMED GUILTY is a maddening indictment of Mexico’s corrupt legal system, from cops who are paid by the arrest, to prosecutors who need to present nothing at trials, to judges who refuse to listen to the truth. Lawyers Hernández and Layda Negrete, along with documentarian Geoffrey Smith (THE ENGLISH SURGEON), are given remarkable access to Zuniga, following him in prison and ultimately filming his ever-more-ridiculous retrial, which he watches from a tiny barred area behind the judge. Zuniga himself is a fascinating character who is somehow able to hold back any anger as the inequities just keep piling on, but viewers won’t be able to temper their anger as the frustration builds to impossible heights. Smith and Hernández will participate in a postscreening discussion and reception that will bring the 2010 Human Rights Watch Film Festival to its conclusion, until next year, when another series of politically based dramas and documentaries expose other frightening tragedies occurring all over the world.
Agnès Jaoui directed, cowrote, and stars in this fabulously French film about literature, music, love, and loyalty. Lolita (newcomer Marilou Berry) is an overweight young woman with dreams of becoming an opera singer. However, people seem to take an interest in her only when they learn that her father, mean-spirited Etienne (cowriter Jean-Pierre Bacri, Jaoui’s partner), is a famous novelist and publisher. Indeed, that is the case when her vocal coach, Sylvia (Jaoui), finally agrees to help Lolita’s singing group prepare for a special performance. Meanwhile, Etienne takes Sylvia’s husband, struggling novelist Pierre (Laurent Grevill), under his wing, even as he ignores his daughter’s calls for love. Berry is simply marvelous in her first major role, utterly charming and heartbreaking as she reaches out to her father, puts her faith in the wrong relationship, and battles to express herself in a smothering world of hangers-on, wanna-bes, and, if she looks hard enough, true love. There’s a reason this film was chosen to open the 2004 New York Film Festival. Don’t miss it.
South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo’s latest film about a South Korean auteur, LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL, is another intriguing examination of art and sex in contemporary society, following NIGHT AND DAY (2008), WOMAN ON THE BEACH (2006), TALE OF CINEMA (2005), and WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (2004). Hong, who has served as a juror at several film festivals and whose work has screened at fests all over the world, sets his latest self-reflexive story at the Jecheon International Music and Film Festival, where director Ku will be part of the jury. But it turns out that Ku is a self-absorbed, insensitive, and subtly obnoxious filmmaker who cares only about himself, walking away from fans and colleagues in the middle of a conversation or in the midst of signing an autograph, interested only in listening to people praise his own talent, which has been relegated to art-house films that few people see and even fewer understand. After leaving the festival to teach a class at a school on Jeju Island, he visits with a famous painter and former mentor who has unknowingly married Ku’s first love, setting the stage for the creepy Ku to perform yet more selfish acts. Kim Tae-woo is outstanding in the lead role, playing the self-obsessed director with an unerring casualness that makes him more absurdly ridiculous than conniving and mean-spirited. With a little bit of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 here, Woody Allen’s STARDUST MEMORIES there, Hong once again reveals the soft underbelly of ego within the film industry, but he also needs to edit himself more, as the bittersweet, slyly ironic LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL, made for a mere $100,000, is his latest film to clock in at more than two hours.
