From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Augusta Palmer

After nearly a month of film programs, New York's 21st Asian American International Film Festival wrapped on Sunday, August 23rd. The festival opened during the last week of July, when crowds of cinephiles lined up outside Manhattan's Alliance Francaise to see New York premieres of Eric Koyanagi's "Hundred Percent" (celebrating yellow power in a fictional Venice Beach populated by Asian American stars Tamlyn Tomita, Dustin Nguyen, and Garrett Wang), Harish Saluja's "The Journey" (a meditation on existence in the Indian-American community starring the masterful duo of Roshan Seth and Saeed Jaffrey), and Steve Wang's "Drive" (modestly touted as "the best Hong Kong action movie never made in Hong Kong").

Smaller, but faithful and interested crowds turned out for quieter films with fewer big names attached, like Rea Tajiri's "Strawberry Fields" (a quiet, well-crafted coming-of-age story set in the early 1970's) and Mani Ratnam's "Iruvar/The Duo" (a brilliantly satirical look at friendship, politics, and movie stardom in India). Several days of video programming showcased video work on everything from feminism (in both Wen-jie Qin's "Woman Being" and Mayfair Yang's "Through Chinese Women's Eyes") to the search for the ultimate tomato (in Kimberly Saree Tomes' "Looking for Wendy") to the future of surveillance (in Tran T. Kim-Trang's "Ocularis: Eye Surrogates") to queer Asian and Asian-American identities (in Mickey and Ming-Hsiu Chen's "Not Simply a Wedding Banquet," among others).

Bill Gee, executive director of the festival's sponsor, Asian CineVision, arrived on his motorcycle in time to introduce a staggering number of film and video programs and festival director Vivian Huang also made her share of introductions and managed to keep the festival running smoothly even when prints failed to arrive on time.

On Sunday August 1, Huang introduced one of the festival's most interesting programs of shorts, titled "Metaphor/Metaphysics" only to find that virtually all of the directors were chatting amongst themselves in the hall outside the screening room. After someone corralled the directors, they were introduced to their audience and the program began. The ensuing shorts ran the gamut from straight-forward narratives to a zany 13-minute exploitation film (Kentaro's "Secret Asiant Man") and an animated portrait film assembled from cut and pasted photos (Masahiro Sugano's "Hisao"). Many of the producers and directors of the 11 shorts gathered for a Q & A session after the program which touched on a variety of subjects. On the subject of inspiration, "Coma" director Anil Baral said he had dreamed his film's labyrinthine plot. "Secret Asiant Man" director Kentaro explained that he "just wanted to make an exploitation film," and Steve Yamane, director of the collage film "Jumping at Shadows," admitted, "I get inspired by just walking around."

Variations on the usual independent filmmaking war-stories were provided, as well, as Greg Pak (dir. "Mouse"- in which the male protagonist tries to avoid a discussion with his girlfriend about unplanned pregnancy by obsessively chasing a mouse around his apartment) detailed the difficulties of obtaining, caring for and training brown mouse actors. Apparently brown mice are both more expensive and harder to find than the standard white variety. Pak confessed that, due to the commingling of said actors, "By the end of it, I had forty mice!"

More hardships were endured by Kentaro, whose elegantly improvised "Secret Asiant Man" was largely filmed on the sly in New York City 's subway system. When refused entry to the subway with camera and lights, Kentaro faked being handicapped, hiding his equipment under a blanket as he was wheeled into stations in the decrepit wheelchair -- which so often passes for a dolly in low-budget filmmaking. The casual and comfortable atmosphere of the AAIFF seemed to make any question acceptable. When asked about budgets, Pak easily announced that the 11 minute "Mouse" had cost about $8500. Other filmmakers present quickly volunteered that they had used the time-honored financing methods of Robert Townsend: putting it all on the plastic and worrying about those pesky credit card bills later.

Despite the complaint that "festivals only care about features," producer Angie Wong ("Coma") voiced her own preference for the short form and writer/director/producer Fatimah Tobing Rony ("Demon Lover") said that short films were an opportunity to avoid making "your usual HBO Hollywood dog food" and a "place to dare." Many of the directors also agreed that there was a small, but growing market for and an increased public awareness about short films. Mentioned as a factor in creating an increased public awareness and taste for short films was the growing attendance of film festivals by the "general public." The crowds at the 21st AAIFF certainly confirmed the idea that film festivals could draw large groups of the interested movie-going public as well as filmmakers and distributors. When asked to detail the market for shorts, filmmakers mentioned that many European and a few American theaters were looking for (and willing to pay for) shorts to run with features. In addition, the directors said there was a limited video market due to the increasing popularity of shorts and that cable networks like Showtime also provide a great venue.

Many of the shorts and features previously mentioned were shown again to new audiences as the festival continued with a showcase of "New Asian American Independent Cinema" in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema on Henry Street. Brooklyn audiences were also treated to Francisco Aliwalas' "Disoriented" and Hur Jin-Ho's "Christmas in August." The festival's final leg then traveled to Queens' New Center Cinema in Sunnyside for a series of four Filipino films from the fifties, sixties and nineties which, like the recent series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, commemorates the centennial of Philippine independence.

This year's festival received attention from many media outlets - even the usually staid New York Times hopped on the bandwagon with a Sunday feature story - because of a feeling that Asian American filmmakers and film viewers are a growing (though still relatively small) force in both the American film industry and audience. Most of the attention focused on relative newcomers like Eric Koyanagi and Steve Wang; but it should also be remembered that stalwarts like Rea Tajiri, who has been making films about Asian American history and experience for ten years, also continue to produce fine work that deserves more attention than it has gotten so far. Once again, New York's Asian American International Film Festival has worked to provide that attention by showcasing a diverse body of films from Asian and Asian-American directors to a diverse group of filmgoers all over the boroughs of New York City.

[Augusta Palmer is a freelance film writer and doctoral candidate in Cinema Studies at New York University whose dissertation will focus on Chinese cinema in the 1990s.]