The 27th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications, has officially announced its lineup and it's pretty damn crazy amazing. As Southern California's largest and most prestigious film festival of its kind, LAAPFF is showcasing 32 feature films and 148 shorts over ten days, April 28 through May 7, starting with its biggest Opening Night film ever...
Fast Five, directed by Justin Lin. Yup. The festival will kick off Thursday, April 28 at the Directors Guild of America with the Los Angeles premiere of the latest film in Universal Pictures' blockbuster auto action franchise. Whaaaaat.
While it might seem like an odd choice, it's actually something of a homecoming for Justin Lin, whose groundbreaking first solo feature Better Luck Tomorrow screened at the festival back in 2002. And while Justin has graduated to bigger and badder studio fare, he's one of those guys who has always kept one foot firmly planted with the community. So this is going to be pretty cool.
Lots of great films and events happening throughout the festival, and I'll be sure to highlight a bunch of them as it gets closer (less than a month away!), but for now take note of the festival's Centerpiece Presentation, Bertha Bay-Sa Pan's Almost Perfect. The romantic comedy stars Kelly Hu as a thirty-something New York career woman juggling romance and a dysfunctional family. It's screening Saturday, April 30 at the DGA.
The festival will wind down the following week with the Closing Night presentation of the Taiwan hit film Love in Disguise, directed by and starring pop star Leehom Wang. Described as "a likeable modern Chinese take on Cyrano De Bergerac," the film screens on Thursday, May 5 at the festival's new venue, CGV Cinemas in Koreatown.
And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. The schedule is jam-packed with narrative features, documentaries, shorts programs, parties and other cool events. In addition, the festival will be running concurrently with Visual Communications' very first digital media conference, C3: The Conference for Creative Content. And last but not least, I'm teaming up with the festival to present the official AAM 10th Anniversary Party on April 30.
So mark your calendars and make plans to be there. For more information about the whole damn deal, including the full program details, schedule and tickets, go to the LAAPFF website here.