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3.20.2007

20th sfiaaff: tuesday


I was hoping to write up some stuff about SFIAAFF over the weekend, but alas, life got in the way. Nevertheless, there are several good, solid days of the festival left, with a great schedule of films... Like tonight, there's the Music Video Asia 2007 shorts program, a blend of cool, wacky, fresh and fun videos from Asian and Asian American bands. There's also Stephane Gauger's feature debut Owl and the Sparrow, a romance set in modern Saigon. And Asian American film fans, old and new, shouldn't pass up the chance to see the 1988 film The Wash, a tribute to the late Mako, who performs alongside the late Nobu McCarthy in a story by acclaimed playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. Newschoolers could learn a thing a two from these folks. Another film I've been really looking forward to seeing is Romeo Candido's Filipino supernatural thriller Ang Pamana: The Inheritance. The online trailer gave me the creeps, and the film's premiere was a hit at the Hawaii International Film Festival late last year. Finally, one of the films I'm most curious about is Juwan Chung's Los Angeles gang drama Baby, which seems to be part of a recent trend of Asian American gangster films. And I like gangster films.