Posts by Brian
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LAAPFF report: Golden Slumbers in Long Beach
Posted May 21st, 2012 by Brian in Essays
Long Beach’s Art Theatre is 12 miles from my childhood home in Cerritos, California. That makes the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival’s three days of screenings there my closest film festival outings from where I grew up. Earlier this year, I saw Davy Chou’s excellent new documentary GOLDEN SLUMBERS at the Hong Kong International [...]
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SDAFF at the Hong Kong International Film Festival
Posted April 6th, 2012 by Brian in Uncategorized
Many of the films at this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival we’d seen before — in fact, THE DAY HE ARRIVES played SDAFF ’11, and three films (I WISH, LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE, and HEADSHOT) will be at our Spring Showcase this month. Yet, every waking, non-dim sum hour was spent in movie theaters, or in [...]
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Confessions of a SFIAAFF juror
Posted March 17th, 2012 by Brian in SDAFF Stories from SFIAAFF30
Ah, the juror tell-all, one of the great genres of American prose. Imagine our culture without such literary monuments as Confessions of a “Rape Cop” Juror or The Private Diary of an O.J. Juror. These are the tales of justice and democracy that make America the fine, scandal-loving, celebrity-idolizing, quick-buck-scavenging nation it so dashingly is. [...]
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Top 20 Hong Kong films of the 1980s
Posted February 28th, 2012 by Brian in Uncategorized
Damn you, LoveHKFilm! The home of the best English-language reviews of Hong Kong films on the ‘net is back with another time-suck: a poll of the greatest Hong Kong films of the 1980s. And so I followed the directions, and looked at the list of all 1980s Hong Kong films. Some initial observations: -There are [...]
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SDAFF at the 2012 Palms Springs International Film Festival
Posted January 10th, 2012 by Brian in Uncategorized
The Palm Springs International Film Festival is a miracle of an event. Somehow they made it work. Positioned after the Golden Globe nominations are announced and before the Oscar nom ballots are due, while stationed in an area with a lot of Academy voters and a lot of film buffs with time on their hands, [...]
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SDAFF’s Cinematic North Korea
Posted December 21st, 2011 by Brian in Essays
One of the more intriguing facts to emerge after Kim Jong-il’s death is the extent to which North Korea’s former leader loved movies. Like collection-of-20,000-DVDs-and-videos love. Like once-kidnapped-his-favorite-South-Korean-director love. Variety called him a “film fanatic” and BBC news called him a “cinephilic despot.” Twentieth-century totalitarian governments are well-known for using cinema to galvanize and propagate, [...]
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Looking ahead at the International Film Festival Summit
Posted December 13th, 2011 by Brian in Uncategorized
As the 12th San Diego Asian Film Festival closed over a month ago, we jumped immediately into planning the 2012 edition of our annual fest. First stop was Austin, Texas, where the International Film Festival Summit convened, and festival organizers from around North American (and beyond) traded notes on everything from programming to sponsorship to [...]
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Inspirational Documentary, THE POWER OF TWO, wins Audience Award
Posted November 2nd, 2011 by Brian in Uncategorized
Out of more than 600 films entered into competition for the 12th San Diego Asian Film Festival, organizers are proud to announce that this year’s audience selected the inspirational film, THE POWER OF TWO, as the Festival Audience Award Winner. THE POWER OF TWO, directed by Marc Smolowitz, is a feature-length documentary about twin sisters [...]
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SDAFF and Sharpie
Posted November 1st, 2011 by Brian in Uncategorized
I wore a Sharpie throughout the festival. I couldn’t work without it. Let me walk you through a day in the life of a film festival. In the morning, we get tapes in, and we need to jot down notes for the projectionists about when the film is playing and in what audioriums. Then [...]
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Final Day of 12th San Diego Asian Film Fest- FINAL UPDATES
Posted October 28th, 2011 by Brian in Uncategorized
It’s finally come to that day where we have to say goodbye to the 12th San Diego Asian Film Film Festival. We’ve built some wonderful memories together, so be sure to join us for closing night and celebrate with us one more time. A FEW CLOSING NIGHT NOTES 1. We’ll have beer, wine, and snacks [...]
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