Specter is at odds with Senator Bill Frist, who has his own immigration bill. Frist's version punishes employers for hiring illegal immigrants, adds more border patrol agents, and makes it a crime to be in the US without proper papers. It would also increase the number of employment-based green cards so that more visas would be available.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton says the GOP's bills are not in keeping with the Bible. "It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Hillary, what are you doing? What's with the Bible talk? I know you're trying to move over to the middle and sell yourself as a moderate but it's not really working. Do you think you're going to win some conservative's heart just cause you used the word "scripture?"

"His mother networked among parents in Texas, where the Indian-American community is very active in spelling bees. They advised her to move to Texas, saying that Georgia didn't have a reputation of taking spelling competition seriously."

It's been a fun week at the festival, Daniel Dae Kim sightings and all. For proof, press here and you might spy a photo or two by Jay Jao of some happily-partying Hyphen staffers at this past Saturday's film fest party.

Posted by Melissa at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

In non-film festival news, here's a couple stories that have grabbed my eye lately.

Specter is at odds with Senator Bill Frist, who has his own immigration bill. Frist's version punishes employers for hiring illegal immigrants, adds more border patrol agents, and makes it a crime to be in the US without proper papers. It would also increase the number of employment-based green cards so that more visas would be available.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton says the GOP's bills are not in keeping with the Bible. "It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Hillary, what are you doing? What's with the Bible talk? I know you're trying to move over to the middle and sell yourself as a moderate but it's not really working. Do you think you're going to win some conservative's heart just cause you used the word "scripture?"

"His mother networked among parents in Texas, where the Indian-American community is very active in spelling bees. They advised her to move to Texas, saying that Georgia didn't have a reputation of taking spelling competition seriously."

It's been a fun week at the festival, Daniel Dae Kim sightings and all. For proof, press here and you might spy a photo or two by Jay Jao of some happily-partying Hyphen staffers at this past Saturday's film fest party.

Posted by Melissa at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

In non-film festival news, here's a couple stories that have grabbed my eye lately.

Specter is at odds with Senator Bill Frist, who has his own immigration bill. Frist's version punishes employers for hiring illegal immigrants, adds more border patrol agents, and makes it a crime to be in the US without proper papers. It would also increase the number of employment-based green cards so that more visas would be available.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton says the GOP's bills are not in keeping with the Bible. "It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Hillary, what are you doing? What's with the Bible talk? I know you're trying to move over to the middle and sell yourself as a moderate but it's not really working. Do you think you're going to win some conservative's heart just cause you used the word "scripture?"

"His mother networked among parents in Texas, where the Indian-American community is very active in spelling bees. They advised her to move to Texas, saying that Georgia didn't have a reputation of taking spelling competition seriously."

It's been a fun week at the festival, Daniel Dae Kim sightings and all. For proof, press here and you might spy a photo or two by Jay Jao of some happily-partying Hyphen staffers at this past Saturday's film fest party.

Posted by Melissa at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

So often when you boil down a question, it becomes one of those perennial unaswerable ones: nature or nurture? heart or mind? chicken or fish? And it's so annoying, because we asked those questions in high school english and I already know that you're just in for endless debate with murky morality and rationalizations all around.

Another one of those questions came up for me last night at, where else: the SF Asian American Film Festival.

It was a really amazing documentary, called "China Blue." Shot over the course of many years in a denim factory in southern China, the film followed both the factory owner and a young girl named Jasmine through their travails of getting out orders on time and trying to make a buck. Literally.

The whole time I was watching the film I kept wondering, "How did they get this kind of access?" They were shooting inside the factory, following the owner to a brutal negotiation with a client in Shanghai, recording a standoff between workers (whose pay was 9 weeks overdue) and management. They interviewed the girls (mostly age 14 -20) in their dorm room, filmed during forced overtime hours -- literally all night for days on end, without pay -- and recorded Jasmine's disappointment when her first paycheck was withheld as a "deposit" by the company, and consequently she couldn't go home to visit her family that year.

The film gave an incredibly candid look inside a contemporary sweatshop, and it was a huge accomplishment.

But here's the dilemma part, for me:

During the Q&A, filmmaker Micha X Peled and his coproducer admitted that they told the factory owner they were making a film about the "great economic boom in China." They courted him for months, "became friends," and thus were given almost completely unfettered access to the factory floor, to workers, and to some business meeting.

As someone who's worked both as a journalist and in documentary film, I find this extremely problematic. It's true, there's no way they'd have been able to make this film if they had said, "we want to show how you exploit your workers for profit, how the world's jeans are made by 14-year-old girls forced to work all night who get paid $1 or $2 a day." And I'm really glad I was able to see this film.

So... Do the ends justify the means?

It just seems unethical to me to lie to your subjects about the nature of your film. You have a special position of power as a filmmaker (or journalist) -- in the edit room you can manipulate their image, select their speech, and lay down music to create empathy or antipathy. You can distribute this created image around the world freely, make money, get famous, use it to get your next grant, whatever. Their image is your capital, and a good filmmaker exploits that capital to their best advantage.

And therefore I feel like we have great responsibility to treat our subjects fairly. The film explained that this was actual a pretty decent factory: it was new, clean, and the owner was proud of it. It said that 100% of factories in China have to operate like this, or worse, in order to stay competitive. "We're in a race to the bottom," Peled said, and it really seems to be true. But if that's the case, then it seems especially unfair to make this factory owner the face of China's exploitative labor market.

Maybe the filmmakers thought of it as an undercover investigation, rooting out the bad guys and exposing them to the world. And in certain circumstances I think that's okay.

So I don't know what to think. I have to respect the filmmakers for their vision, their dogged persistence in the face of arrests and confiscated footage and being forced to start over after two years of shooting. And I especially respect them for bringing a story that few in this country have seen so close up -- the place where our jeans come from.

So I'm rather flummoxed about the whole thing. And it feels relevant to me, because there have been a lot of times where I've wanted to be deceptive about a project I was working on, or just not tell the whole truth. Where you draw that line just seems to be one of those unanswerable questions.

I'd be interested if anyone else has had this kind of dilemma, and what they did about it.

Posted by jennifer at 9:29 AM | Comments (5)

So often when you boil down a question, it becomes one of those perennial unaswerable ones: nature or nurture? heart or mind? chicken or fish? And it's so annoying, because we asked those questions in high school english and I already know that you're just in for endless debate with murky morality and rationalizations all around.

Another one of those questions came up for me last night at, where else: the SF Asian American Film Festival.

It was a really amazing documentary, called "China Blue." Shot over the course of many years in a denim factory in southern China, the film followed both the factory owner and a young girl named Jasmine through their travails of getting out orders on time and trying to make a buck. Literally.

The whole time I was watching the film I kept wondering, "How did they get this kind of access?" They were shooting inside the factory, following the owner to a brutal negotiation with a client in Shanghai, recording a standoff between workers (whose pay was 9 weeks overdue) and management. They interviewed the girls (mostly age 14 -20) in their dorm room, filmed during forced overtime hours -- literally all night for days on end, without pay -- and recorded Jasmine's disappointment when her first paycheck was withheld as a "deposit" by the company, and consequently she couldn't go home to visit her family that year.

The film gave an incredibly candid look inside a contemporary sweatshop, and it was a huge accomplishment.

But here's the dilemma part, for me:

During the Q&A, filmmaker Micha X Peled and his coproducer admitted that they told the factory owner they were making a film about the "great economic boom in China." They courted him for months, "became friends," and thus were given almost completely unfettered access to the factory floor, to workers, and to some business meeting.

As someone who's worked both as a journalist and in documentary film, I find this extremely problematic. It's true, there's no way they'd have been able to make this film if they had said, "we want to show how you exploit your workers for profit, how the world's jeans are made by 14-year-old girls forced to work all night who get paid $1 or $2 a day." And I'm really glad I was able to see this film.

So... Do the ends justify the means?

It just seems unethical to me to lie to your subjects about the nature of your film. You have a special position of power as a filmmaker (or journalist) -- in the edit room you can manipulate their image, select their speech, and lay down music to create empathy or antipathy. You can distribute this created image around the world freely, make money, get famous, use it to get your next grant, whatever. Their image is your capital, and a good filmmaker exploits that capital to their best advantage.

And therefore I feel like we have great responsibility to treat our subjects fairly. The film explained that this was actual a pretty decent factory: it was new, clean, and the owner was proud of it. It said that 100% of factories in China have to operate like this, or worse, in order to stay competitive. "We're in a race to the bottom," Peled said, and it really seems to be true. But if that's the case, then it seems especially unfair to make this factory owner the face of China's exploitative labor market.

Maybe the filmmakers thought of it as an undercover investigation, rooting out the bad guys and exposing them to the world. And in certain circumstances I think that's okay.

So I don't know what to think. I have to respect the filmmakers for their vision, their dogged persistence in the face of arrests and confiscated footage and being forced to start over after two years of shooting. And I especially respect them for bringing a story that few in this country have seen so close up -- the place where our jeans come from.

So I'm rather flummoxed about the whole thing. And it feels relevant to me, because there have been a lot of times where I've wanted to be deceptive about a project I was working on, or just not tell the whole truth. Where you draw that line just seems to be one of those unanswerable questions.

I'd be interested if anyone else has had this kind of dilemma, and what they did about it.

Posted by jennifer at 9:29 AM | Comments (5)

So often when you boil down a question, it becomes one of those perennial unaswerable ones: nature or nurture? heart or mind? chicken or fish? And it's so annoying, because we asked those questions in high school english and I already know that you're just in for endless debate with murky morality and rationalizations all around.

Another one of those questions came up for me last night at, where else: the SF Asian American Film Festival.

It was a really amazing documentary, called "China Blue." Shot over the course of many years in a denim factory in southern China, the film followed both the factory owner and a young girl named Jasmine through their travails of getting out orders on time and trying to make a buck. Literally.

The whole time I was watching the film I kept wondering, "How did they get this kind of access?" They were shooting inside the factory, following the owner to a brutal negotiation with a client in Shanghai, recording a standoff between workers (whose pay was 9 weeks overdue) and management. They interviewed the girls (mostly age 14 -20) in their dorm room, filmed during forced overtime hours -- literally all night for days on end, without pay -- and recorded Jasmine's disappointment when her first paycheck was withheld as a "deposit" by the company, and consequently she couldn't go home to visit her family that year.

The film gave an incredibly candid look inside a contemporary sweatshop, and it was a huge accomplishment.

But here's the dilemma part, for me:

During the Q&A, filmmaker Micha X Peled and his coproducer admitted that they told the factory owner they were making a film about the "great economic boom in China." They courted him for months, "became friends," and thus were given almost completely unfettered access to the factory floor, to workers, and to some business meeting.

As someone who's worked both as a journalist and in documentary film, I find this extremely problematic. It's true, there's no way they'd have been able to make this film if they had said, "we want to show how you exploit your workers for profit, how the world's jeans are made by 14-year-old girls forced to work all night who get paid $1 or $2 a day." And I'm really glad I was able to see this film.

So... Do the ends justify the means?

It just seems unethical to me to lie to your subjects about the nature of your film. You have a special position of power as a filmmaker (or journalist) -- in the edit room you can manipulate their image, select their speech, and lay down music to create empathy or antipathy. You can distribute this created image around the world freely, make money, get famous, use it to get your next grant, whatever. Their image is your capital, and a good filmmaker exploits that capital to their best advantage.

And therefore I feel like we have great responsibility to treat our subjects fairly. The film explained that this was actual a pretty decent factory: it was new, clean, and the owner was proud of it. It said that 100% of factories in China have to operate like this, or worse, in order to stay competitive. "We're in a race to the bottom," Peled said, and it really seems to be true. But if that's the case, then it seems especially unfair to make this factory owner the face of China's exploitative labor market.

Maybe the filmmakers thought of it as an undercover investigation, rooting out the bad guys and exposing them to the world. And in certain circumstances I think that's okay.

So I don't know what to think. I have to respect the filmmakers for their vision, their dogged persistence in the face of arrests and confiscated footage and being forced to start over after two years of shooting. And I especially respect them for bringing a story that few in this country have seen so close up -- the place where our jeans come from.

So I'm rather flummoxed about the whole thing. And it feels relevant to me, because there have been a lot of times where I've wanted to be deceptive about a project I was working on, or just not tell the whole truth. Where you draw that line just seems to be one of those unanswerable questions.

I'd be interested if anyone else has had this kind of dilemma, and what they did about it.

Posted by jennifer at 9:29 AM | Comments (5)

Did anyone watch this film tonight? I heard the theatre was packed.

I watched a sneak peek of it a while ago, and I just remember thinking, dang, I wish I could see this on the big screen.

Now, I am a showtunes/musical geek (among my other geeky habits). But I was seriously singing along. First Asian American musical since Flower Drum Song. How can you beat that?

I also loved the fact that the story is about Colma - but I don't think you need to have ever been to Colma to like it.

I have been to Colma several times in my life - thrice to have dim sum at Koi Palace, once to drive a driver at the driving range, and once to visit a friend who rented a pad there (though he's since moved away). Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For those of you who saw it, what did you think? And what is it about the musical genre that is so damn entertaining? For those of you don't like musicals but saw Colma: The Musical anyway, what did you think?

And does anyone know if the people who made Colma are actually from there?!

Posted by momo at 12:45 AM | Comments (7)

Did anyone watch this film tonight? I heard the theatre was packed.

I watched a sneak peek of it a while ago, and I just remember thinking, dang, I wish I could see this on the big screen.

Now, I am a showtunes/musical geek (among my other geeky habits). But I was seriously singing along. First Asian American musical since Flower Drum Song. How can you beat that?

I also loved the fact that the story is about Colma - but I don't think you need to have ever been to Colma to like it.

I have been to Colma several times in my life - thrice to have dim sum at Koi Palace, once to drive a driver at the driving range, and once to visit a friend who rented a pad there (though he's since moved away). Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For those of you who saw it, what did you think? And what is it about the musical genre that is so damn entertaining? For those of you don't like musicals but saw Colma: The Musical anyway, what did you think?

And does anyone know if the people who made Colma are actually from there?!

Posted by momo at 12:45 AM | Comments (7)

Did anyone watch this film tonight? I heard the theatre was packed.

I watched a sneak peek of it a while ago, and I just remember thinking, dang, I wish I could see this on the big screen.

Now, I am a showtunes/musical geek (among my other geeky habits). But I was seriously singing along. First Asian American musical since Flower Drum Song. How can you beat that?

I also loved the fact that the story is about Colma - but I don't think you need to have ever been to Colma to like it.

I have been to Colma several times in my life - thrice to have dim sum at Koi Palace, once to drive a driver at the driving range, and once to visit a friend who rented a pad there (though he's since moved away). Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

For those of you who saw it, what did you think? And what is it about the musical genre that is so damn entertaining? For those of you don't like musicals but saw Colma: The Musical anyway, what did you think?

And does anyone know if the people who made Colma are actually from there?!

Posted by momo at 12:45 AM | Comments (7)

...Whose Children Are These? and Dastaar are films I've seen within a 48-hour span.

So I have been watching a bunch of documentaries at the SFIAAFF. I'm not sure why I'm drawn towards documentaries, and Asian American documentaries at that. Perhaps I feel like it's my job, since Hyphen is an Asian American magazine.

I think another factor is that a lot of documentaries aren't shown elsewhere. Because I'm not directly involved with justice work, I feel like I have to catch these films here. I watch them for my own education.

Oh yeah, I've been bringing my mom to these films too. She's visiting this week, and I thought, what better way for mother/daughter bonding than over Asian American films about deportation, racism, and overall injustices? Apparently, I am not the only one with this idea, 'cause yesterday at Grassroots Rising I saw someone I knew, who'd brought her father (go dads!), and one of the filmmakers brought his dad to the screening, but I guess that's a little different.

Anyway, like I said, yesterday we watched Grassroots Rising. They also showed two shorter documentaries, Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity and Whose Children Are These? I think out of all the film programs I've seen, this one is one of the best - if not the best - not only because the documentaries are well-made, but because they are timely and explore/expose important issues. The theatre was mostly full, but of course certainly not as packed as the crowd for opening night at Americanese. The theatre itself was much smaller than the Castro.

On Saturday we watched Sentenced Home about Cambodian Americans who've been deported. After we watched the film, I think my mother said something to my friend along the lines of, "something should be done about this." The film says 1,500 Cambodian Americans are awaiting deportation, and many have been deported already.

I think what all films were good at showing, which I am not doing a good job of, is showing how all of this affects families. If you just look objectively at data - say, 1,500, we might think, well, that's not a lot of people compared to ___. But that shouldn't matter. And especially in tight-knit communities, things tend to have a much larger impact on the community. It's 1,500 people, but think about how that impacts all the friends, relatives, families. All torn apart (again).

Same with Whose Children Are These?, about the special registration after 9/11 (83,000 men registered, 14,000 detained, all are men - just thinking about what that does to families hurts). None were found to be terrorists, but many were still deported for technical reasons, like not having their immigration papers in order. What?

Dastaar is about how Sikhs have suffered every single time there was anything terrorist-related news in the world, for the last 20 or so years or even longer. Beyond the "Sikhs are not Muslims" reasoning, it's just really messed up. So the film explores a little bit about what Sikhism means and why people wear the dastaar (turban). They juxtaposed that with images of bin Laden and Hussein. The reasoning is simplistic but makes a lot of sense: if the only images we see of people wearing turbans are those two, then we might associate turbans with terrorists. And for people who've suffered harassment and violence as a result of this, they don't need any intellectualizing of the issue. It's real.

The only non-documentary in the list above is Punching at the Sun, which feels somewhat like a documentary. I blown away with the writing/storytelling and acting. There's already another discussion of this film elsewhere on our blog, so I'll just leave it at that.

Tonight my mom and I are going to watch China Blue. Then it's closing night for me.

Posted by momo at 9:33 AM | Comments (1)

...Whose Children Are These? and Dastaar are films I've seen within a 48-hour span.

So I have been watching a bunch of documentaries at the SFIAAFF. I'm not sure why I'm drawn towards documentaries, and Asian American documentaries at that. Perhaps I feel like it's my job, since Hyphen is an Asian American magazine.

I think another factor is that a lot of documentaries aren't shown elsewhere. Because I'm not directly involved with justice work, I feel like I have to catch these films here. I watch them for my own education.

Oh yeah, I've been bringing my mom to these films too. She's visiting this week, and I thought, what better way for mother/daughter bonding than over Asian American films about deportation, racism, and overall injustices? Apparently, I am not the only one with this idea, 'cause yesterday at Grassroots Rising I saw someone I knew, who'd brought her father (go dads!), and one of the filmmakers brought his dad to the screening, but I guess that's a little different.

Anyway, like I said, yesterday we watched Grassroots Rising. They also showed two shorter documentaries, Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity and Whose Children Are These? I think out of all the film programs I've seen, this one is one of the best - if not the best - not only because the documentaries are well-made, but because they are timely and explore/expose important issues. The theatre was mostly full, but of course certainly not as packed as the crowd for opening night at Americanese. The theatre itself was much smaller than the Castro.

On Saturday we watched Sentenced Home about Cambodian Americans who've been deported. After we watched the film, I think my mother said something to my friend along the lines of, "something should be done about this." The film says 1,500 Cambodian Americans are awaiting deportation, and many have been deported already.

I think what all films were good at showing, which I am not doing a good job of, is showing how all of this affects families. If you just look objectively at data - say, 1,500, we might think, well, that's not a lot of people compared to ___. But that shouldn't matter. And especially in tight-knit communities, things tend to have a much larger impact on the community. It's 1,500 people, but think about how that impacts all the friends, relatives, families. All torn apart (again).

Same with Whose Children Are These?, about the special registration after 9/11 (83,000 men registered, 14,000 detained, all are men - just thinking about what that does to families hurts). None were found to be terrorists, but many were still deported for technical reasons, like not having their immigration papers in order. What?

Dastaar is about how Sikhs have suffered every single time there was anything terrorist-related news in the world, for the last 20 or so years or even longer. Beyond the "Sikhs are not Muslims" reasoning, it's just really messed up. So the film explores a little bit about what Sikhism means and why people wear the dastaar (turban). They juxtaposed that with images of bin Laden and Hussein. The reasoning is simplistic but makes a lot of sense: if the only images we see of people wearing turbans are those two, then we might associate turbans with terrorists. And for people who've suffered harassment and violence as a result of this, they don't need any intellectualizing of the issue. It's real.

The only non-documentary in the list above is Punching at the Sun, which feels somewhat like a documentary. I blown away with the writing/storytelling and acting. There's already another discussion of this film elsewhere on our blog, so I'll just leave it at that.

Tonight my mom and I are going to watch China Blue. Then it's closing night for me.

Posted by momo at 9:33 AM | Comments (1)

...Whose Children Are These? and Dastaar are films I've seen within a 48-hour span.

So I have been watching a bunch of documentaries at the SFIAAFF. I'm not sure why I'm drawn towards documentaries, and Asian American documentaries at that. Perhaps I feel like it's my job, since Hyphen is an Asian American magazine.

I think another factor is that a lot of documentaries aren't shown elsewhere. Because I'm not directly involved with justice work, I feel like I have to catch these films here. I watch them for my own education.

Oh yeah, I've been bringing my mom to these films too. She's visiting this week, and I thought, what better way for mother/daughter bonding than over Asian American films about deportation, racism, and overall injustices? Apparently, I am not the only one with this idea, 'cause yesterday at Grassroots Rising I saw someone I knew, who'd brought her father (go dads!), and one of the filmmakers brought his dad to the screening, but I guess that's a little different.

Anyway, like I said, yesterday we watched Grassroots Rising. They also showed two shorter documentaries, Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity and Whose Children Are These? I think out of all the film programs I've seen, this one is one of the best - if not the best - not only because the documentaries are well-made, but because they are timely and explore/expose important issues. The theatre was mostly full, but of course certainly not as packed as the crowd for opening night at Americanese. The theatre itself was much smaller than the Castro.

On Saturday we watched Sentenced Home about Cambodian Americans who've been deported. After we watched the film, I think my mother said something to my friend along the lines of, "something should be done about this." The film says 1,500 Cambodian Americans are awaiting deportation, and many have been deported already.

I think what all films were good at showing, which I am not doing a good job of, is showing how all of this affects families. If you just look objectively at data - say, 1,500, we might think, well, that's not a lot of people compared to ___. But that shouldn't matter. And especially in tight-knit communities, things tend to have a much larger impact on the community. It's 1,500 people, but think about how that impacts all the friends, relatives, families. All torn apart (again).

Same with Whose Children Are These?, about the special registration after 9/11 (83,000 men registered, 14,000 detained, all are men - just thinking about what that does to families hurts). None were found to be terrorists, but many were still deported for technical reasons, like not having their immigration papers in order. What?

Dastaar is about how Sikhs have suffered every single time there was anything terrorist-related news in the world, for the last 20 or so years or even longer. Beyond the "Sikhs are not Muslims" reasoning, it's just really messed up. So the film explores a little bit about what Sikhism means and why people wear the dastaar (turban). They juxtaposed that with images of bin Laden and Hussein. The reasoning is simplistic but makes a lot of sense: if the only images we see of people wearing turbans are those two, then we might associate turbans with terrorists. And for people who've suffered harassment and violence as a result of this, they don't need any intellectualizing of the issue. It's real.

The only non-documentary in the list above is Punching at the Sun, which feels somewhat like a documentary. I blown away with the writing/storytelling and acting. There's already another discussion of this film elsewhere on our blog, so I'll just leave it at that.

Tonight my mom and I are going to watch China Blue. Then it's closing night for me.

Posted by momo at 9:33 AM | Comments (1)

Omigosh you'll never guess who I saw yesterday! It was after a screening of 'Conventioneers' at the SFIAAF* and the filmmaker, the gorgeous Mora Mi-Ok Stephens, was talking to a guy with cheekbones out to HERE. "that guy looks totally familiar," i said. "he's someone famous," my date confirmed.
... "Daniel Dae Kim!" i said rather indiscreetly (but i didn't yell it, and of that I'm am proud). and i did feel a little giddy. a lot giddy. I have been called a starf&%cker in the past, and I can't deny it. well, I can deny it in a literal sense... but not necessarily by personal choice.

Anyway, ahem, moving right along...
That's not why i've pulled my head out of the sand to blog today, not at all.

I actually volunteered to take notes in the dark for a program of shorts, called "The Life Quixotic." All were centered around the theme of "love". And if you can hurry up and get there, in the 30 minutes between posting this blog and when the next showing of it starts on Sunday at noon, GO SEE IT.

Last year I saw a program of shorts at the festival that basically totally sucked. I don't remember much about it except total disappointment. But it's the luck of the draw, and this year every single one was awesome.

Standouts? "Spy Moms" by William Lu takes the typical Chinese mom's prying and control to another level --a world of hi-tech surveillance and undercover tactics. It definitely got the loudest laughs, because despite rather weak acting the satiric yet somehow affectionate take on the overbearing Asian mom is all too familiar to most of us.

Another favorite: "Slip of the Tongue" by Skyline High School junior Karen Lum. Using the slam poetry of Adriel Luis as a soundtrack, the film's quick and unpredictable editing -- and Luis's even faster speaking--deconstructs the protagonist's attempted pickup line, "What's your ethic makeup?" to a girl at the bus stop. Really interesting cuts and cinematography, plus the extremely sharp spoken word, completely made up for the low-budget, DV look of the piece. Lum admitted in the Q&A later that the film "cost about 5 bucks."

Hauntingly beautiful was the Japanese entry, "Blue." Nominally about a woman deeply in love with a married man, the film captures the quiet, desperate longing and loneliness of Sakura, who sees her story reflected in a threesome of young schoolkids that visit her fruit stand. She has slow, meaningful conversations with the left-out girl who's asked for cherries: "You can't eat them. It's not yet the season. But if you wait long enough, you can eat them." Laden with double meaning.

The slow shots and ponderous cinematography are the target of what was probably my favorite film, "My Prince, My Angel." I was so disappointed that the filmmakers weren't in attendance, because I wanted to ask them about the strange, made-up language they had their actors intone in melodramatic tones throughout. Though the characters had names like "Shen" and "Ship Ship Roo" --they spoke what seemed to be a gibberish that sometimes resembled Chinese, sometimes Korean, sometimes almost Vietnamese, all with varyingly strong American accents. The soundtrack used the evocative music from Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love," but you could see the filmmaker's poking fun at the arthouse films coming out of China --the girl in the rickshaw, the fortune pinned to a blue rose on the ceiling, the montage of the two lovebirds frolicking through picnics and parks. The film was innovative and beautifully shot, and it never lost it's undercurrent of fun beneath the a dramatic emotions of its storyline.

Three other films, "Bunny and Clydo" -with a $100,000 budget spent on pyrotechnics! and "Not a Fucking Blonde -following an Asian couple's fight in the subway through an ugly subterrain of ethnic insecurity, and "The Light" a weird little film about a guy who can't make a traffic light in his morning routine -rounded out the program. If this is the direction that Asian American cinema is going to take, I'm really psyched.

Meanwhile, starspotting is still a viable pastime as you wait in line at the festival, so keep your eyes peeled and I'll see you at the festival!

*San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

Posted by jennifer at 11:02 AM | Comments (6)

Omigosh you'll never guess who I saw yesterday! It was after a screening of 'Conventioneers' at the SFIAAF* and the filmmaker, the gorgeous Mora Mi-Ok Stephens, was talking to a guy with cheekbones out to HERE. "that guy looks totally familiar," i said. "he's someone famous," my date confirmed.
... "Daniel Dae Kim!" i said rather indiscreetly (but i didn't yell it, and of that I'm am proud). and i did feel a little giddy. a lot giddy. I have been called a starf&%cker in the past, and I can't deny it. well, I can deny it in a literal sense... but not necessarily by personal choice.

Anyway, ahem, moving right along...
That's not why i've pulled my head out of the sand to blog today, not at all.

I actually volunteered to take notes in the dark for a program of shorts, called "The Life Quixotic." All were centered around the theme of "love". And if you can hurry up and get there, in the 30 minutes between posting this blog and when the next showing of it starts on Sunday at noon, GO SEE IT.

Last year I saw a program of shorts at the festival that basically totally sucked. I don't remember much about it except total disappointment. But it's the luck of the draw, and this year every single one was awesome.

Standouts? "Spy Moms" by William Lu takes the typical Chinese mom's prying and control to another level --a world of hi-tech surveillance and undercover tactics. It definitely got the loudest laughs, because despite rather weak acting the satiric yet somehow affectionate take on the overbearing Asian mom is all too familiar to most of us.

Another favorite: "Slip of the Tongue" by Skyline High School junior Karen Lum. Using the slam poetry of Adriel Luis as a soundtrack, the film's quick and unpredictable editing -- and Luis's even faster speaking--deconstructs the protagonist's attempted pickup line, "What's your ethic makeup?" to a girl at the bus stop. Really interesting cuts and cinematography, plus the extremely sharp spoken word, completely made up for the low-budget, DV look of the piece. Lum admitted in the Q&A later that the film "cost about 5 bucks."

Hauntingly beautiful was the Japanese entry, "Blue." Nominally about a woman deeply in love with a married man, the film captures the quiet, desperate longing and loneliness of Sakura, who sees her story reflected in a threesome of young schoolkids that visit her fruit stand. She has slow, meaningful conversations with the left-out girl who's asked for cherries: "You can't eat them. It's not yet the season. But if you wait long enough, you can eat them." Laden with double meaning.

The slow shots and ponderous cinematography are the target of what was probably my favorite film, "My Prince, My Angel." I was so disappointed that the filmmakers weren't in attendance, because I wanted to ask them about the strange, made-up language they had their actors intone in melodramatic tones throughout. Though the characters had names like "Shen" and "Ship Ship Roo" --they spoke what seemed to be a gibberish that sometimes resembled Chinese, sometimes Korean, sometimes almost Vietnamese, all with varyingly strong American accents. The soundtrack used the evocative music from Wong Kar-Wai's "In the Mood for Love," but you could see the filmmaker's poking fun at the arthouse films coming out of China --the girl in the rickshaw, the fortune pinned to a blue rose on the ceiling, the montage of the two lovebirds frolicking through picnics and parks. The film was innovative and beautifully shot, and it never lost it's undercurrent of fun beneath the a dramatic emotions of its storyline.

Three other films, "Bunny and Clydo" -with a $100,000 budget spent on pyrotechnics! and "Not a Fucking Blonde -following an Asian couple's fight in the subway through an ugly subterrain of ethnic insecurity, and "The Light" a weird little film about a guy who can't make a traffic light in his morning routine -rounded out the program. If this is the direction that Asian American cinema is going to take, I'm really psyched.

Meanwhile, starspotting is still a viable pastime as you wait in line at the festival, so keep your eyes peeled and I'll see you at the festival!

*San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

Posted by jennifer at 11:02 AM | Comments (6)

Omigosh you'll never guess who I saw yesterday! It was after a screening of 'Conventioneers' at the SFIAAF* and the filmmaker, the gorgeous Mora Mi-Ok Stephens, was talking to a guy with cheekbones out to HERE. "that guy looks totally familiar," i said. "he's someone famous," my date confirmed.
... "Daniel Dae Kim!" i said rather indiscreetly (but i didn't yell it, and of that I'm am proud). and i did feel a little giddy. a lot giddy. I have been called a starf&%cker in the past, and I can't deny it. well, I can deny it in a literal sense... but not necessarily by personal choice.

Anyway, ahem, moving right along...
That's not why i've pulled my head out of the sand to blog today, not at all.

I actually volunteered to take notes in the dark for a program of shorts, called "The Life Quixotic." All were centered around the theme of "love". And if you can hurry up and get there, in the 30 minutes between posting this blog and when the next showing of it starts on Sunday at noon, GO SEE IT.

Last year I saw a program of shorts at the festival that basically totally sucked. I don't remember much about it except total disappointment. But it's the luck of the draw, and this year every single one was awesome.

Standouts? "Spy Moms" by William Lu takes the typical Chinese mom's prying and control to another level --a world of hi-tech surveillance and undercover tactics. It definitely