Schema Magazine

SFIAAFF Day II didn't formerly begin until the first screenings at 3ish, which meant I was able to partake in some San Franciscan pleasures. Oh la. A MUNI bus took me down -- as in "ridiculously steep" -- Sacramento towards Chinatown where I disembarked for a decidedly rainy walk towards one of my favorite spots - Cafe de La Presse for a Parisian brassiere-style brunch.

After a fresh bite of tiger prawns, avocado, pink grapefruit segments, cherry tomatoes covered in, ahem, french dressing (you know, that tangy reddish salad dressing), and a delightful bowl of cafe au lait, we wandered up towards a soggy Chinatown for a heftier lunch with friends at a Vietnamese pho place. Didn't end up with pho; instead swooned over my spicy-sweet-sour shrimp salad that was covered with crispy garlic flakes.

Of course, the rain didn't deter me from lining up outside the Golden Gate Bakery for the best dan tats in the whole entire universe (well, at least my universe, ha!). Light, flaky pastry shell filled with warm silky egg custard. This fortified our next mission for some shopping -- er, window shopping in Union Square.

After a nap, headed down to eat somewhere random (re: not very good) on Fillmore for a screening of Fog (see pic above), a US/Hong Kong joint production by director Kit Hui. She was in attendance, along with the actors of the film, Terence Yin and Eugenia Yuan.

Here's the SFIAAF write-up for Fog...like I've said before, they've done a better job of summing the film up than I would have:

This intimate Hong Kong story follows a young man attempting to move past his amnesia. While he strives to reconcile his past with his future, the city around him busily prepares for the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's reunification with China. Propelled by an engrossing, understated performance from Chinese American heartthrob Terence Yin (TOMB RAIDER II: THE CRADLE OF LIFE; THE HEAVENLY KINGS), this film marks the assured debut of writer-director Kit Hui, who makes good on the promise of her award-winning short MISSING (SFIAAFF '07). Wai (yin) is in a state of confusion. He moves through each day in a trance, numbly stumbling from home to hospital to work and vainly attempting to jog his foggy memory by wandering through his childhood school, by making frequent visits to his friend's bar. Gradually Wai gathers bits of information about his past life and the world around him through conversations, photographs and even trips to the library. He absorbs most of it in a state of numbness, maintaining equilibrium with alcohol and drugs. Some revelations, however, prove too great to ignore. Also starring the lovely Eugenia Yuan (CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, SFIAAFF '03), FOG is a rich exploration of the search for identity on levels both micro and macro: Wai finds a rare opportunity to overcome a wealth of past wrongs, while Hong Kong sits at a crucial point, looking back on its history, and towards its uncertain future.

Okay, lookit, I go into the film as a regular layman audience member...not a film school student with arty understanding of the mechanics of independent film, you hear me? Translation: I watch films for entertainment value, not so much artistic merit. It's an escape mechanism, a need for a break and a bit of pleasure -- this is why we watch films en masse, no? I preface with this caveat, because....well, my whole row in the theatre squirmed over and over again, and many eventually fell asleep...one even left..due to sheer boredom. It was pure molasses, aka. tortuously slow....with some sweet moments where you'd think, ah, redemption, it's going to pick up, it's going somewhere...and then it doesn't. What a tease. Not a guy, but dare I say it had blue ball moments.

Obviously I'm not going to kiss some asses by saying it was fantastic. I could say it was an artistic, brooding piece of melancholy in the human psyche...just so I can sound arty and intelligent. But for the regular filmgoer, this film was pretty much a tortuous experience for someone who seeks instant gratification in their movie experience. But that's just me...and my row in the theatre. To be fair, the vision of the filmmaker and her producers was probably that this film was an experiment in the noir. The trailer's good, though HERE.

After the screening, headed out to Mighty, a club on Utah Street, for Directions in Sound: NOTES FROM THE ASIAN AMERICAN UNDERGROUND (click on link for list of DJs, including DJ Shortkut - pictured above):

DIRECTIONS IN SOUND is a genre-bending showcase featuring the best future-forward sounds that are blowing up around the globe. This year our lineup features internationally known artists and up-and-comers bubbling below the radar. If you can dig non-stop bangin' beats, electro-clash with a neon sheen, and even hip-hop smashed on video, DIRECTIONS IN SOUND 2010 will satisfy all the senses.

Then back to Hotel Tomo for live sets in Kevin's (Hawaii via Toronto) Room *** from Goh Nakamura (above), Han Wang from the band Invisible Cities, and Dan Lee from the band Scrabbel (listen below to their great song, "Emily, I").

Other films screening on Day II included (all write-ups from SFIAAF website):

Thai film, Agrarian Utopia (trailer):

The magical, sustaining forces of the land collide with the all-pervasive march of globalization in this remarkable, visually stunning film. A scripted work that plays closer to documentary, AGRARIAN UTOPIA describes the conditions befalling traditional agricultural lifestyle in a time of mass farming, government instability and global price setting. The film follows two farmers and their families through the cycle of a rice crop season. Strapped by crippling debts and interest rates, the families share a plot of land; the fertile soil offers them potential riches, but market prices may reduce their crop value to almost nothing. Creative means are keys to survival; some of the film's most exquisite sequences feature the harvesting of snakes, honeycomb, frogs and mushrooms, sustenance the land can provide, but the government cannot. All the while, political turmoil roils distant Bangkok with cries for reform and fairer agricultural policy, while the city itself provides a further temptation to abandon agrarian life entirely. A neighboring farmer offers a potential solution through his holistic, organic approach to farming, but neither of these options can restore a lifestyle that is fast disappearing. The son of farmers, director Uruphong Raksasad offers an intimate vision of the Thai countryside, where what is on display is not just a way of life, but also the force of nature itself. The film's astonishing cinematography and time-lapse images capture the sublimity of electrical storms, morning mist and gathering winds, and present a glimpse of what a utopian agrarian world could truly look like.

Malaysian film, Talentime (trailer):

Amid the heady days of youth, three high school students gear up for a talent competition. While shuttling between home and school, they find their way from love to loss, and back again. Melur is the eldest daughter of a well-to-do English/Malaysian family. She sweetly sings her heart out and recites poignant poems over the breakfast table at home. Mahesh, a handsome and deaf Indian student with a motorbike, is assigned to chauffeur her to rehearsals. Hafiz is a guitar-strumming Malay student who dutifully tends to his dying mother while loving Melur from afar. The upcoming competition unravels the heightened emotions of the students and their families as they navigate heartache, tragedy and the fluctuating tempo of quotidian life. In her final film, the late director Yasmin Ahmad interweaves music and dialogue with humor and grace, as well as a touch of Yasujiro Ozu. The strains of Debussy imbues the empty school halls with longing, while some John Hughes-style montages make a fitting ode to awkward teenage angst. Never one to shy away from sensitive topics, Ahmad tackles the complex social and cultural dynamic of Malaysia through the films' touching multicultural family portraits; her characters, both young and old, flit effortlessly between languages both spoken and unspoken, voicing the soundtrack of the young at heart. "A story full of joy and pain, hope and despair, and a host of beautifully written songs," is how Ahmad described TALENTIME. One of the most acclaimed and original voices in Southeast Asian cinema, she passed away suddenly last July, aged just 51.

Independencia from the Phillippines (trailer):

Still in his mid-twenties, director Raya Martin is already a Cannes Film Festival veteran. Having attended with projects and films in 2005 and 2008, in 2009 he became the first Filipino to have two films at Cannes (a rare feat for a director of any nationality), with MANILA (co-directed with Adolfo Alix Jr.) and INDEPENDENCIA. The second of a planned trilogy on the history of the Philippines (each film's aesthetic will mirror the era), INDEPENDENCIA takes place during the American occupation of the early 20th century, and is shot as a classic Hollywood studio film from the period, with black-and-white deep-focus photography, soft-focus close-ups and elaborately fake sets. The film's plot is stripped to an essential framework (a man, a woman and a child hide from American patrols in the jungle rains), the better to address more weighty, complex ideas on culture, history, colonialism and cinema itself. To recreate the classic Hollywood look, Martin constructed an elaborate "jungle" set indoors, using backdrops intricatedly hand-painted by local artists. The hypnotic result recalls such studio exotica as I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, RED DUST, and SHANGHAI EXPRESS, with cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (who's worked with Pedro Costa and Francois Ozon) casting a dazzling spell of faces, bodies and movement amidst dark shadows and shafts of diffused light. "Nobody makes this kind of film anymore," Martin recalls. "It's more expensive than traveling to a real forest, which we have almost everywhere in the Philippines, and our audiences are used to realism in the movies. What made it easier for everyone was our child-like fascination. We were like kids reconstructing a lost world."

Documentary In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee (trailer):

n 1966, an American couple adopted a Korean "orphan" named Cha Jung Hee, and renamed her Deann Borshay. No one questioned the authenticity of the identity papers from the adoption agency, nor did anyone heed the little girl's pleas that her family was actually still alive. As time went on, Jung Hee/Deann happily integrated into the new family. There was just one important discrepancy-she was never Cha Jung Hee. A moving and complex follow-up to the acclaimed FIRST PERSON PLURAL (SFIAAFF '99), Borshay's IN THE MATTER OF CHA JUNG HEE takes us on a remarkable journey through an individual's "mislabeled" past and a nation's scarred history. When Borshay was first taken to Sun Duck Orphanage, she was given the identity of another girl and told to keep it a secret. Over 50 years later, Borshay returns to Korea to find the real Cha Jung Hee: she visits the orphanage, appears on a television show, and even cold calls a list of some hundred Cha Jung Hees. Throughout, the artifacts of her identity are placed into question even as she strives to piece together a family history she can scarcely corroborate. Partially a personal investigation, IN THE MATTER OF CHA JUNG HEE also traverses the changing face of Korea's cultural landscape, inextricably linking this history with Borshay's compelling narrative.

Narrative Raspberry Magic (trailer):

Eleven-year-old Monica Shah (the wonderfully charming Lily Javaherpour) is a slightly awkward but totally precocious tween who spends all her free time preparing for the regional science fair. Her hypothesis: "Touch therapy can accelerate the growth of rubus idaeus." (In other words, human contact can help raspberry plants grow.) To Monica, raspberries are more than just a desired fruit; they represent "the perfect balance of sweet and sour, the good and the bad," the right combination necessary to savor all the flavors of life itself. When Monica's father loses his job and her mother's cherished cookbook idea loses steam, the fragile bonds keeping them all together begin to wear thin; even her little sister begins to mimic the parents' depression. Through the turmoil, Monica continues with her raspberry experiment; soon it becomes less about winning at the fair, and more about proving the importance of human connection--and getting her parents back together. Things take a turn for the worst when a classmate sabotages her experiment and her father moves out, but Monica might just have a few tricks up her sleeve to work the kind of magic needed to sort it all out... Pendarkar's winning debut feature is a charming coming-of-age tale which explores the delicate nature of human relations and the complex web of emotions that tie us together. Evoking the quirky adolescence of Wes Anderson's RUSHMORE, but taking it in a wholly fresh and heartfelt direction, RASPBERRY MAGIC is an enormously satisfying film about staying in touch.

"new">Scene/Unseen (a collection of short films -- click on the link for the list of short films):

Shorts Programs
Program Running Time is 93 min
From Singapore, Queens, India, Canada, San Francisco, London and China, these stunningly bold films give voice to the quiet struggles, strengths, emotions and thoughts of everyday life.

A collection of short films in Sweet Dreams & Beautiful Nightmares (click on link for a list of the short films):

Shorts Programs
Program Running Time is 87 min
Forget about safety and instead tread the path not taken. Here lies an eclectic collection of shorts, where encountering doppelgangers and stalking your crushes are considered recreational sports.