Festival founder Lee Ann Kim picks must-see flicks for San Diego Asian Film Fest
October 15th, 2009 by Scott Marks
The San Diego Asian Film Festival kicks off its 10th year tonight. I asked Lee Ann Kim, the founder and director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival (www.sdaff.org), to single out five must-see movies from the 200 films that are screening at this year’s fest.
“Can I cheat?” she asked while scrambling for a schedule of the festival, which runs October 15 - 29 at UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas at Hazard Center.
Cheat away, Lee Ann. Just make sure you give us your choice picks.
Here they are:
Antoine Houang is the star and subject of Laura Bari’s documentary “Antoine”
1. “The first one that comes to mind is ‘Antoine’ (Oct. 18 at 4:15 p.m. & Oct. 19 at 5:20 p.m.). I have never seen a documentary like this in my life. It’s about a blind, five-year-old Vietnamese boy living in Montreal who speaks French. While the film is a documentary, it is based on his imaginary life and alter ego as a detective. The movie begins with Antoine opening the window to let light in as he sits before a Braille typewriter. It is so lovely because by the end of the movie you forget that he’s blind and see just how able he is. Never once does it talk about his parents or his Asian ethnicity. It’s all about allowing him to be a child.
2. This year there is a special emphasis on cancer awareness. Last year we lost George Lin, our festival programmer, and we are showing a couple of movies that play along that theme. ‘Be Sure to Share’ (Oct. 15 at 9:30 p.m. & Oct. 18 at 7:20 p.m.) is a film that took four months of calling and emailing Japan in order for us to secure. It’s by Shion Sono, who is known for doing really extreme films in Japan (‘Suicide Club,’ ‘Hazard’). It’s a meditative film about a crotchety old Japanese guy who is possibly dying of cancer. His son visits him every day and finds out that he, too, has terminal cancer. It’s a fascinating look at how Asian culture looks at disease and how we keep secrets from each other. The film is dedicated to the director’s father, who died of cancer.
A scene from Oliver Paulus’ “Tandoori Love”
3. ‘Tandoori Love’ (Oct. 18 at 2:20 p.m. & Oct. 22 at 6:55 p.m.) is a Bollywood film set in the Swiss Alps. Where else are you going to see that? I think people are going to flip over it.
4. ‘Whatever It Takes’ (Oct. 18 at 2:45 p.m. & Oct. 25 at 1 p.m.) is a documentary about this bullish Asian American principal in the Bronx. Principal Edward Tom is starting a charter school in one of the most difficult school systems in the country with the most difficult kids. It follows him through the first full year of trying to get the school off the ground. You rarely get to see an Asian American man in a situation like that. Culturally we are raised to be members of the tribe and never the chief.
A scene from Kang Hyeong-Cheol’s “Scandal Makers”
5. The Korean film ‘Scandal Makers’ (Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.) is hilarious. It stars Cha Tae-hyun, the same actor who starred in ‘My Sassy Girl.’ If you want a movie with a lot of laughs, this is the one to go to.”
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This article originally appeared on SDNN.com.
Tags: Antoine documentary, Be Sure to Share, George Lin, Hazard Center, lee ann kim, san diego asian film festival, Scandal Makers, sdaff, SDNN, Tandoori Love, UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas, Whatever It TakesFiled Under News
EC talks with Lee Ann Kim, founder and director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival
October 10th, 2009 by Scott Marks
Lee Ann Kim
Where do you live in San Diego?
You mean my exact address?
What am I, a stalker? No. Give me a vicinity, an area.
I live in Sorrento Valley.
You are married with how many kids?
Two. A three and a four year old. The three-year-old is adopted from Korea and the four-year-old came out of my belly.
I had not heard that you adopted a baby. Good for you.
Yeah. Thank you.
You were our favorite news diva at Channel 10. Why did you decide to deprive San Diego television viewers of your elan and perspicacity?
It really wasn’t…I don’t know. The timing was right. In local news the business model is suffering and a lot of the old school people who are still left and making more than six figures are at risk. Carol Lebeau left. I was part time at the time I decided to leave. They wanted me to go back full time. I was working two days a week and they wanted me to go back to work five days a week. They wanted to take away my anchoring. They wanted me to be a one man band reporter carrying my own camera, but they didn’t want to pay me more than the two days they were already paying me. I don’t think so. They should have just fired me or let me go, because this is really offensive. That’s just the model in which they are working now. But you know, the film festival is my newscast so I feel like I’m doing the exact same thing I was doing over there.
Yes, but it’s only two weeks out of the year.
No. We do it all year long.
But we don’t get to see you with any regularity.
That’s fine. I regularly get to see our members. It’s so interesting because everything that I have learned from news has easily transferred over to what I am doing for the Film Foundation.
You got the idea for the film festival 10 years ago. Where did it come from?
It came from the time I was president of the Asian American Journalists Association. It was really boring and I thought we have all these meetings with 20 or 30 journalists, let’s do something bigger and better. Let’s engage the larger community in issues that people care about outside of journalism. A film festival sounded like a good idea. As you know, I am not a cinephile. I didn’t grow up watching a million movies.
Poor thing.
I come from an immigrant family and movies were not valued in my family. “E.T.” was the first movie I watched in a movie theater.
I repeat: Poor thing.
(Laughing) While I love movies, I am not a cinephile and I didn’t study film. The fact that I am running a film festival is very interesting. I felt there was a need in this community to connect them to these films that a lot of people don’t know how to get access to. A lot of these films represent stories that need to be seen by a mass audience. Those are the two main reasons why I’m doing what I do.
How has the festival changed in 10 years?
It’s kind of like going to high school. When you’re a freshman you don’t have that many friends and it’s kind of awkward.
I wouldn’t know.
(Laughing) And every single year you get more friends, start maturing and start developing your style. By the time you’re a senior, it’s like you own the halls. We are now in our super senior year. We have collected a number of loyal patrons and members that love and respect us and don’t want to see us go away. That’s what’s happened over the past 10 years. Our programming staff has really matured. I have matured in the way that I view films. I’m still not a cinephile, but I know what works well in San Diego and with our audience. We have grown to the point we have a lot of staffers who can do a lot great things. I always cross my “t’s” and dot my “i’s” so we have extreme attention to detail especially for our filmmakers.
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