Claus Mueller

Presented by New York’s Asian Cinevision, The Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) had its 37th edition from July 24 – August 2. There are now 22 Asian film festivals in the United States programming films for the communities they serve. The strong link to community based partners is also one of the defining marks of AAIFF and the program lists one or more partners for each selected film. What is also striking is the festival events designed to involve the audience.  The COTABATO SESSIONS featured a documentary by Joel Quizon on an indigenous Philippine rhythmic ensemble music form (kulintang) followed by a music and dance session.  A stop-motion animation workshop was held on three occasions during the festival by Hui-Ching Tseng and associates for local teenagers to demonstrate a sustainable art creation model.  The brief videos produced were shown at the end of the festival with a retrospective of Hui-Chin Tseng’s work.  The other events included a panel on Asian American Women Media Makers,  a screen play competition, the 10^th anniversary film lab  giving 72 hours to contestants to produce a 5-minute  film  themed  “The Color of my Hair”,  and  Howard Weinberg’s work-in-progress documentary on Nam June Paik  and  the Television Lab of  New York’s PBS station 13/WNET.

The community involvement of the festival was linked to the theme of engagement under which many of the productions shown can be subsumed. This theme did not guide the selection but emerged after hundreds of productions were reviewed for the fest. There seemed to be no principal interest in commercial distribution of the films. However, Asian Cine Vision will prepare again a package of films made available to communities and other non-theatrical viewing venues.

Films and features were produced by Asian-Americans and film makers from Asian countries. The program included films from the Philippines, a special focus of this year’s AAIFF, Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Japan, Australia, Afghanistan, India, and several feature co-productions involving the UK, USA, Hong Kong, and Italy.  Most of the productions, including shorts, were directed by Asian-American film makers from the US.

AAIFF selected 18 feature length films and documentaries and had six program sections with 33 shorts of diverse styles and genres. They covered Iranian shorts films, the culture and impact of the clothing industry under the We Are What We Wear motto, Happily Obsessed individuals, the discontent of industrial laborers and farm workers, and a special program of differently formatted films for children made by filmmakers less than 21 years old. A separate short program, Letters from the South, was devoted to the Southeast Asian experience of diaspora Chinese with films from China, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Myanmar. The primary venue for the screening was the City Cinema Village East multiplex with secondary venues at IFP’s Made in NY Media Center, Museum of China in America, Mandarin Ink, the Asian American Research Institute of City University of New York, and the Asia Society where the Opening Presentation took place.

Engagement and the appeal to action are characteristics for many of program selections. SOLD by Jeffrey D. Brown opened the festival sponsored by the Asia society, partnered with 8 community organizations. Following the fate of a thirteen year old girl from Nepal who is trafficked to a Kolkata brothel the film is an outstanding portrait of the child sex trade and of the cultural and the social obstacles preventing an effective solution of the problem. Most child prostitutes in India have been lured from Nepal, and Nepalese and Indian authorities respond passively. Police corruption keeps the brothels open and if the children are liberated parents refuse in most cases to accept them again.  It is estimated that more than 100 million children have been trafficked for forced labor and sex. The Philippine director Hannah Espia tells an equally touching story in her feature TRANSIT focusing on the deportations from Israel of young children born to foreign workers. It depicts the threat to Philippine immigrants of losing their children even though the adults may have work permits. Mostly employed as care givers they are part of the most vulnerable segment of the labor force and some have hidden their children ever since Israel adopted the enabling legislation in 2009. Reports indicate that Israel does not completely enforce the law, yet the threat remains. TRANSIT nonetheless depicts a condition which is similar to other countries which depend on semiskilled cheap labor. The migrants have limited rights, suffer from discrimination and are subject to political vagaries, economic upheavals and xenophobic outbursts. In the Taiwanese THE RICE BOMBER by Cho Li the audience is confronted with the impact of the World Trade Organization’s rules once a country has joined it and the drastic consequences for sectors of the local economy. After Taiwan became a member of the WTO, imported rice destroyed the indigenous rice agriculture. Combined with land speculation and corruption, rice farmers became superfluous.  In The Rice Bomber, Yang Rumen’s story is effectively retold as it transpired from his autobiography.  A descendent of rice farmers, Ru openly opposes the government and resorts eventually to planting rice bombs to get the attention of governmental agencies. He surrenders to the police, is condemned to jail, pardoned and promotes now new organic farming. Though the insertion of archival material hampers the flow of the story, The Rice Bomber succeeds because of superb cinematography and acting. It also adds to the reflection about the WTO with its contradictory and frequently negative impact. In Ru’s words, he has been “searching for a crack in the ground where ideals could blossom”.  

That something can and should be done is also the message of Steven de Castro’s documentary FRED HO’S LAST YEAR.  The life and actions of this acclaimed Chinese American jazz musician convey a strong message of artistic innovation, resilience, and de-mystification of the powers constraining us. For Fred Ho it is always necessary to engage in creative opposition to the establishment and generate our own solutions.  Throughout his long standing battle with cancer he rarely ceased being active and continued to embrace issues and causes.  In the documentary BRINGING TIBET HOME, Tenzin Tsetan records Tenzing Rigdol’s successful attempt to smuggle 20,000 kilos of soil from Tibet to Dharamsala, India with its large community of Tibetan refugees.  Rigdol’s installation ‘Our Land, Our People’ invited in a powerful and touching ceremony young and old Tibetans to touch the spoil of their land of origin. At the end no soil was left.

The 2014 AAIFF program also offered compelling documentaries and attractive feature films. Dean Hammer and Joe Wilson developed in KUMU HINA, the portrait of a public teacher who tries to preserve and instruct, through her example and traditional Hawaiian dance and song ceremonies, the tradition of ‘mahu’ a transgendered identity. Mahu incorporates both male and female characteristics and reflects an island custom that that was suspended through Western education.

The UK Japan co-production THE LOVE HOTEL by Philip Cox and Hikaru Toda depicts a unique and anonymous space where individuals from all walks of life can explore their sexual desires during short stays. Through the director’s impeccable and sensitive exploration the audience shares the backstage of Japanese public life and learns without prejudice about the Hotel’s clients and their intimate erotic pursuits. Because Japanese society is becoming more conservative and authoritarian, politicians enacting repressive rules curtail and now close the hotels. Thus this film, the first on this subject ever made, is a poignant document.

Christine Choy, one of the most prominent Asian American independent film makers directed GHINA. It covers the current presence of China in Ghana, as seen through personal observations of the Chinese working there and the reaction of Ghanaian workers to the Chinese employing them. In 2010 Ghana signed multibillion dollar investment agreements with China covering mostly the energy and infrastructure sectors. By early 2013 there were close to half a billion dollars of direct Chinese investments. The Chinese experience in Ghana serves as an indicator of the Chinese impact on other African countries. Some of the experts interviewed in Ghina certainly raise the issue of a new form of colonialism which China may represent. On the other side the interviews with Chinese having set up small businesses and local workers reveal mutual distrust and stereotyping. Yet the larger context is not covered and the documentary remains somehow episodic, though the personal experiences provide telling insights.

Some well executed and entertaining features like CHU AND BLOSSOM (Charles Chu, Gavin Kelly) and PRETTY ROSEBUD (Oscar Torre) proved appealing.  HOW TO FIGHT IN SIX INCHES by Ham Tran from Vietnam gained most kudos. This feature revolves around a fashion designer Anne from New York following her finance Kiet to Vietnam because she suspects him of having an affair with a model. She becomes part of the local fashion industry and turns into a supermodel while pursuing her investigation. The film has fast and passionate comedic actions set in the high fashion industry of metropolitan Ho Chi Minh City with a coterie of attractive models and glitterati. They readily convey the rise of a comfortable middle class and the dominance of the consumer culture. Probably recognizing themselves and their desires the Vietnamese audience loved the film. It became a high grossing box office hit in Vietnam witch is also a tribute to the actress and reigning star Kathy Uyen.

Overall the Asian American International Film Festival met its objectives and was well received by a loyal audience in sold out performances. Its community and engagement approach is unique and certainly successful.

Claus Mueller

filmexchange@gmail.com