More stuff to check out at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival...
VC Digital Posse Ver. 2010
It's baaack!!! After a one-year hiatus, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival is pleased to welcome the return of our annual showcase featuring brand-new works from VC's Armed With a Camera Fellowship and UCLA's Video Ethnography Workshop from the Center for Ethnocommunications. Through stories ranging from family relationships, illusions of beauty, to a kid who simply wants what everyone else has, it's clear that the future of Asian Pacific American cinema is in good hands.
Villon's Wife
Directed by prolific director Kichitaro Negishi (WHAT THE SNOW BRINGS, Festival 2007), VILLON'S WIFE depicts a long-suffering woman's relationship with her brilliant but self-destructive writer husband in postwar Tokyo, exploring themes of Japanese masculinity, as well as the nurturing feminine ideal. Based on a semi-autobiographical 1947 novel by enfant terrible Osamu Dazai, the story centers the unwavering commitment of Sachi, brilliantly portrayed by Takako Matsu, who recently won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.
Adrift
At her wedding reception, Duyen watches her groom Hai, a good-natured taxi driver, get drunk and pass out. Time goes by, Hai never seems to find his libido, and the marriage remains unconsummated. For advice and consolation, Duyen turns to her best female friend, the novelist Cam - not understanding that Cam's interest in her is more than platonic. But Cam's perverse response is to push her into the arms of her dissolute, sexed up male friend.
Mamachas Del Ring
From the heights of the Bolivian Andes comes the story of Carmen Rose the Champion, an indigenous woman who struggles to make it on her own in the male-dominated world of Bolivian professional wrestling. Up until her arrival, Bolivia had never seen an indigenous woman take her petticoats and bowler hat into the ring, and the crowds can't seem to get enough. But the pressures of daily living and gendered responsibilities begin to eat way at Carmen, and one day her her husband issues a firm ultimatum: wrestling or your family.
Macho Like Me
Helie Lee grew up very much a woman in what she was convinced was a world made for men. Helie set out to live as a man to experience the benefits she believed men receive from society, culture, tradition, religion and nature. With the help from friends to document this social experiment, Helie moves to a neighborhood where she begins anew as Harry for six and a half months. MACHO LIKE ME chronicles Helie's physical transformation from a longhaired, fashionable woman to Harry, an average city guy with a charming smile and slight figure.
SF Stories
SF STORIES opens with Michael, bumbling his way through a first date, and you'd be forgiven for initially assuming that the plot will take on a boilerplate, rom-com direction. However, soon enough, writer/director Raul Jocson's ambitious feature debut veers off into unexpected directions of human drama and humor. With its nine interwoven vignettes, the film reveals layers of intricate storytelling, all set against the backdrop of a local's San Francisco, far away from cable cars and sourdough soup bowls.