NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL 2007: June 22 ­ July 8

June 22 ­ July 5 @ the IFC Center
(323 Sixth Avenue, between 3rd and 4th Streets)

July 5 ­ 8 @ Japan Society
(333 East 47th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Full write-ups are available at:
http://www.subwaycinema.com/

The final line-up for the New York Asian Film Fest. More guests, more movies, more fun!

SPECIAL GUESTS
Director E. J-Yong of DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS will be attending

Director Shusuke Kaneko of DEATH NOTE and DEATH NOTE: THE LAST NAME will be attending

Director Sion Sono of EXTE will be attending

Director Han Jae-Rim of THE SHOW MUST GO ON will be attending

SPECIAL EVENTS
The NYAFF has partnered with Korea¹s Mise-en-scene¹s Genres Film Festival
(MGFF) to bring over their award-winning horror, comedy, melodrama, sci-fi and action short films, selected by MGFF¹s committee and jury members, including directors Park Chan-Wook (I¹m A Cyborg, But That¹s OK), Ryu Seung-Wan (City of Violence), E. J-Yong (Dasepo Naughty Girls), Kim Dae-Seung (Traces of Love), Bong Joon-Ho (The Host) and Kim Jee-Woon (A Bittersweet Life). Presented with the generous support of the Korean Cultural Service New York.

From Lahore with Gore ­ July 3 sees the New York debut of HELL¹S GROUND, Pakistan¹s first splatter film, produced by the good people at the Mondo Macabro DVD label. The director and producers will be at the screening with a clip reel highlighting the wildest Pakistani exploitation movies from the 70¹s and 80¹s and there will be big hugs for audience members who are suddenly terrified to realize that Pakistan is infested with zombies and hairy monsters.

THE LINE-UP

THE BANQUET (2006, CHINA) - Zhang Ziyi stars in an epic adaptation of Hamlet brought to you by the entire crew behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:
action ace Yuen Wo-ping, acclaimed composer Tan Dun and Academy Award winning designer Tim Yip. Razor sharp swords, miles of billowing silk and sumptuous sets served up with a side order of scorpion venom.
(Followed by an after-party at the IFC Center Cafe with plenty of free-flowing Kirin Beer!)

GETTING HOME (2006, China) ­ a dirt-poor construction worker has made a deathbed promise: he¹ll take his buddy¹s body home for burial. Problem: he¹s flat broke and thousands of miles from his destination. Solution: he¹ll buy the corpse a bus ticket! Zhang Yang (Shower) delivers a road movie that reminds us that it¹s not the destination that matters, it¹s the journey.
Especially if your traveling companion is a corpse.

TROUBLE MAKERS (2007, China) ­ a rude country cousin to all those artsy fartsy flicks coming out of China, TROUBLE MAKERS elbows its way to the table, belches loudly and shouts dirty jokes while slamming down rice wine.
A bawdy send-up of High Noon with a mousy Party Secretary standing in for Gary Cooper as the reluctant hero out to rid his village of the four bullying Xiong Brothers who have seized it in their iron claw of corruption and crime.

AFTER THIS OUR EXILE (2006, Hong Kong) - the triumphant return of director Patrick Tam after a 17-year absence, this heartbreaking film about fathers and sons is the most acclaimed Chinese film of 2006 (10 major awards and counting). Tam is Wong Kar-wai¹s mentor, and he edited Wong¹s classic Days of Being Wild as well as Johnnie To¹s Election. Shot with off-handed glamour by Mark Lee Pin-bing (In the Mood for Love) this is the story of a young boy (Gouw Ian Iskander) watching his family being torn apart in slow motion by his self-destructive, endlessly raging dad (Aaron Kwok).

DOG BITE DOG (2006, Hong Kong) - spanning one brutal day and night, Dog Bite Dog is a punch in the mouth that drags audiences over the finish line panting, sweaty and exhilarated. It kicks off with a filthy, Cambodian hitman (Edison Chen, channeling Quasimodo) pulling off a kill for hire in Hong Kong, and running into a tormented cop (Sam Lee) and it devolves into a no-holds-barred essay on the law of the jungle written in bullets and bloodshed.

EXILED (2006, Hong Kong) - imagine every action movie made in the last 20 years compressed into a single, super-cool Spaghetti Western set in modern day Macau, and you¹ve got Exiled, the latest movie from Johnnie To (Triad Election, Breaking News). The most majestic ode to hard men making hard choices since The Wild Bunch.

HARD BOILED (1992, Hong Kong) - a 15th Anniversary screening of what might just be the most influential action movie ever made. John Woo¹s farewell to Hong Kong takes you back to a world where Chow Yun-fat (Curse of the Golden
Flower) was a god, Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) was a young punk, and John Woo movies were like a mind-blowing bullet in the head.

BIG BANG LOVE, JUVENILE A (2006, Japan) - what the - ? Just when you think you¹ve figured out Takashi Miike he runs you over with a movie like this.
Aggressively experimental, exquisitely beautiful, it¹s about two men in prison whose romance ends in murder. There¹s also a Mayan pyramid in the basement and a rocket ship warming up its engines outside. A poem, an elegy for lost boys, a provocation and a swooning romance.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

DEATH NOTE and DEATH NOTE: THE LAST NAME (2006, Japan) ­ Japan¹s box office one-two punch of 2006, these goth dramas are twisty cat n¹mouse thrillers that feel like a net-savvy teenager has taken an Agatha Christie novel and forcibly cross-bred it with an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Based on the best-selling manga and anime, these two live-action films sucked up cash all over Asia, telling the tale of a notebook that causes the death of anyone whose name is written on its pages.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

EXTE (2007, Japan) ­ it¹s Chiaki Kuriyama (Go Go Yubari in Kill Bill) as a hairstylist versus killer hair extensions in this horror flick from Sion Sono (Suicide Club). Striking a perfect balance between outright parody and skin-prickling terror, with character actor Ren Osugi (Nightmare Detective) doing a weird cheer on the sidelines, this movie will finally teach you what it really means to have a bad hair day.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

FREESIA: BULLETS OVER TEARS (2006, Japan) ­ an ice cold, near-future sci fi flick about a Japan where revenge is not only legal, it¹s a licensed business where frosty eyed killers punch the tickets of their victims with all the impersonal efficiency of a city official stamping forms. Bloody and bleak, this is a sci fi story with brains ­ most of which wind up splattered on the wall.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

GAMERA THE BRAVE (2006, Japan) ­ the latest installation in the series about everyone¹s favorite giant, flying, radioactive turtle, this is a family-friendly gateway drug to get the anklebiter in your life hooked on giant monsters. Gamera is the Rocky Balboa of the kaiju world, a giant monster who takes as much, if not more, punishment than he dishes out, and his fighting spirit is reborn in this not-quite-for-kids, kid-friendly flick.
(Presented in association with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

HULA GIRLS (2006, Japan) ­ sweeping the Japanese Academy Awards (³Best Film², ³Best Director², ³Best Screenplay², ³Best Supporting Actor²) HULA GIRLS is a maximum strength cinematic antidepressant. A small town in the 60¹s builds a Hawaiian theme park to save itself and they conscript a gang of local losers to be the hula dancers. Director Lee Sang-Il knocks the dust off this formula and makes it shine like a diamond.

MEMORIES OF MATSUKO (2006, Japan) ­ Citizen Kane meets Moulin Rouge. Most movies celebrate winners, but this lush musical unleashes a tidal wave of chorus lines, special effects, and glamorous, glittering sets to tell the story of Matsuko, who never loses faith in love no matter how many times she¹s disappointed by life. From the director of Kamikaze Girls, check your cynicism at the door and prepare to have your heart jump started.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (2006, Japan) ­ Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: the Iron Man;
Vital) makes his most mainstream movie to date about a guy who can walk through dreams, a cop desperate to prove herself and a self-mutilating psychic vampire who engineers a series of grisly suicides. Psychedelic and psychotic, it¹s the strongest movie yet from writer/director/actor/editor/cinematographer Shinya Tsukamoto.
(Co-presented with JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film)

RETRIBUTION (2006, Japan) ­ master of horror, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse), dredges up the waterlogged corpse of J-horror and mutates it into something truly terrifying. Koji Yakusho (Babel, Shall We Dance?) is a cop and also the main suspect in a series of mysterious drownings taking place in a decaying Tokyo. The kind of movie that crawls under your skin and starts to itch.

YO-YO GIRL COP (2006, Japan) ­ a trash-tastic guilty pleasure, like something you¹d find hidden behind your dad¹s mouldering Playboy magazines.
Kenta Fukasaku (son of Kinji Fukasaku of Battle Royale) directs the most recent incarnation of the 80¹s cult TV show about delinquent schoolgirls who fight international terrorists with razor-sharp yo-yos. Like the mutant love child of Hello Kitty and 24.

ZEBRAMAN (2004, Japan) ­ never released in America, Takashi Miike¹s ode to fandom is a joyous, family-friendly explosion of jellied aliens, crab-headed killers, homemade superheroes and possessed schoolkids. Sho Aikawa (in his 100th performance) is a loser schoolteacher whose only solace is his fanboy obsession with obscure 70¹s superhero, Zebraman. And then, of course, aliens attack.

AACHI & SSIPAK (2006, Korea) - eight years in the making, this animated blockbuster has horrified critics and delighted audiences around the world, and no studio is brave enough to release it. A sci-fi action epic about a world powered by poo, this is a vertiginous slide down a swirling toilet bowl of bad taste full of constipated smurfs with AK-47¹s, hallucinogenic laxatives, eye-popping action and a 600 mph violation of corporate copyright.

THE CITY OF VIOLENCE (2006, Korea) - packed with attacking break dancers and BMX bandits, this stripped-down, old school action flick is the latest movie from Korea¹s master of onscreen mayhem, Ryu Seung-Wan (Arahan, Crying
Fist) who teams up with Korea¹s master stuntman and action choreographer, Jeong Du-Hong (Tae Guk Ki, Shiri, The Foul King) to punch out the lights with this two-fisted pulp rocket.

CRUEL WINTER BLUES (2006, Korea) ­ Sol Kyoung-Gu (Oasis, Peppermint Candy) is one of the three actors who take this script in their teeth and tear it up. He plays a rabid, middle-aged gangster killing time in a hick town while waiting to knife the man who killed his best friend. And of course, he passes his days bonding with his victim¹s clueless mother. As serious as a head-on collision, this flick is totally uncompromising.

DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS (2006, Korea)
A full-blown musical about ³Useless High School² where the kids are ditching class to visit the VD clinic, turning tricks and singing dirty karaoke. It¹s a smutty, satirical send-up of high school movies where the ultimate crime is a closed mind, from the director of Korea¹s version of Dangerous Liaisons, EJ Yong. A candy-colored carnival of kinky sex and carefree perversion, it¹ll leave you feeling minty fresh, like you¹ve just had a naughty shower.

I¹M A CYBORG, BUT THAT¹S OK (2006, Korea) - not many romantic comedies begin with a suicide attempt and end with its two lovebirds happily trying to detonate a nuclear device, but not many romantic comedies are directed by Park Chan-Wook (JSA, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy) either. In this movie, his Romeo (mega-celebrity, Rain) is a kleptomaniac and his Juliet (Lim Su-Jeong) is a woman who believes she¹s is a cyborg with machine guns in her fingers and battery level lights in her toes.
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MIRACLE ON FIRST STREET (2007, Korea) ­ the number two biggest grossing movie of the year in Korea, this is a Frank Capra movie gone seriously wrong. A property developer sends in a bunch of gangsters to force the residents of a run-down neighborhood to move. Normally this would result in hilarious hijinks and life lessons. Here it results in hilarious hijinks, suicides, self-immolation and savage beatdowns administered by a young woman who wants to be a boxer.

MISE EN SCENE GENRE FILM FESTIVAL SHORT FILM THROWDOWN!
(2006, Korea) - Korea¹s greatest directors (Park Chan-Wook, Ryu Seung-Wan, EJ Yong and more) have teamed up to curate the Mise En Scene Genre Short Film Festival where they pick the best comedy, horror, action, sci fi and romance short films and now they¹re bringing the best of the fest to New York City. Finally, movies that aren¹t 3 hours long.

NEVER BELONGS TO ME (2006, Korea) - from the director of the cult film Teenage Hooker Becomes Killing Machine in Daehakroh comes the weirdest movie in this year¹s line-up, an experimental art film freak-out about half-tiger criminals, cyborg hookers, Dr. Hell and a man with a machine gun in his pants. Yes, it freaks us out, too. You¹ve been warned.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON (2007, Korea) - fresh out of Cannes! Song Kang-Ho (star of The Host) delivers the performance of his career as a minor league gangster trying to land the first big deal of his life while his family falls apart around him. Massive criminal setpieces unfold in the background while the human drama in the foreground is so sharply observed that it cuts like a straight razor.

TRACES OF LOVE (2006, Korea) ­ pitch-perfect melodrama, distilled to its purest essence and offered to the audience like a refreshing sip from a mountain stream. A young couple watches their future shatter when a real-life Seoul disaster kills one of them, and the other tries to pick up the pieces a decade later. Proof positive that in Korea, making perfect melodramas is an exact science.

DYNAMITE WARRIOR (2006, Thailand) - Dan Chupong (Born to Fight) is a masked thief who flies through the air on homemade rockets and cracks skulls with Mach 3 elbow drops, looking for the tattooed man who killed his parents. A kickboxing pinata made of madness and candy-crammed full of wizards, berserk giants and jaw-dropping action choreography by Panna Rittikrai (The Protector, Ong Bak). It¹s a summer blockbuster that¹ll boil your brain like hot lava.

³FROM LAHORE WITH GORE² featuring HELL¹S GROUND (2006, Pakistan) - (2006, Pakistan) - a one-night-only celebration of Pakistani exploitation movies! We¹ll be screening HELL¹S GROUND, Pakistan¹s first gore film, which plays like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets the Taliban, as well as presenting a clip reel showcasing the mondo madness of Pakistani exploitation flicks from the 70¹s and 80¹s. See the groovy side of Pakistan, where ten-foot-tall marijuana plants grow wild, mace-swinging madmen crush teenage skulls and zombies ­ midget, Muslim zombies ­ want to eat your brains.


About the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) Now in its sixth year, NYAFF is America¹s leading festival of popular Asian cinema. To date, the Festival has featured over 100 films from China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand, including 6 International premieres, 17 North American premieres, 23 U.S. premieres, and over 50 New York premieres.

About Dragon Dynasty
Dragon Dynasty showcases cutting-edge presentations of significant classic and contemporary Asian Cinema for the home entertainment market. Combining elevated production values with dynamic creative execution, each Dragon Dynasty product will extend a compelling invitation to experience the world's most exciting action genre like never before.

About JAPAN CUTS ­ Festival of New Japanese Film To learn more about Japan Society's JAPAN CUTS ­ Festival of New Japanese Film, July 5-July 15, visit www.japansociety.org.

About Mise en Scene Genre Short Film Festival Now in its sixth year, MGSFF is one of the most prestigious short film festivals in Korea, with the exclusive focus on genre short films. The Festival's main objective is to promote talented young Korean filmmakers, and to serve as their launching pad for careers in the film industry.