Justin Lin's FINISHING THE GAME
The Opening Night Presentation + Gala is now SOLD OUT! A rush line will form tomorrow (7/19) at 6:30pm - tickets will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis depending on availability. Cash only.
Filmmaker Highlight: Cheng Yu-Chieh of DO OVER
CineVue was privileged to speak with Cheng Yu-Chieh, an up-and-coming filmmaker whose multiple award-winning debut, DO OVER, will make its New York Premiere at our Festival.
CINEVUE: Please introduce your film and occupation if not a full-time filmmaker.
CYC: My film is titled DO OVER.
CINEVUE: Where you are based?
CYC: I am based in Taiwan.
CINEVUE: Would you please describe your film?
It's five stories set in the new year, all about doing things over.
CINEVUE: Why filmmaking? What’s so compelling about it?
It allows me to connect with many people through filmmaking. Film enables us to share our lives.
CINEVUE: How many films have you made?
CYC: I've made three: two shorts and one feature-length.
CINEVUE: Who or what are your biggest creative influences?
CYC: Now - my actors.
CINEVUE: What has been one blessing and one curse during your film's production?
CYC: We took each curse as a blessing alhough sometimes a curse is still a curse.
CINEVUE: What is the Asian or Asian American film that has had the most significant impact on you?
CYC: TAMPOPO by Juzo Itami.
CINEVUE: What do you look most forward to at the 07 AAIFF?
CYC: Every one going to the festival having a really good time.
Catch DO OVER at 11:30 am on Sunday, July 22nd at Asia Society.
Filmmaker Highlight: Leste Chen of ETERNAL SUMMER
CineVue enjoyed the chance to speak with Leste Chen, an accomplished filmmaker whose critically-acclaimed film, ETERNAL SUMMER, is making its long-awaited New York premiere at our Festival.
CINEVUE: Could you tell us about yourself?
LC: I am a full-time director. I work out of Taipei
CINEVUE: What is the title of your film?
ETERNAL SUMMER
CINEVUE: Could you sum up the main idea of your film?
LC: No soul was born to be alone.
CINEVUE: Why do you make films? What’s special about it for you?
LC: I have tried other jobs before, from visual to art design, for example. I find they lack a sense of fulfillment. I realized only as a director could I combine the many skills I’ve learned; it's very challenging.
CINEVUE: How many films have you made?
LC: I have directed six shorts and three feature-length films.
CINEVUE: Who or what are your biggest influences, creatively speaking?
LC: My parents and Michelle Yeh.
CINEVUE: Please describe a blessing and an obstacle from the production of your film?
LC: Financing is the most difficult problem. But I'm glad that my previous experiences in filmmaking have developed me more in terms of maturity when facing
CINEVUE: What would you choose as the Asian/Asian American film be that has had the greatest impact on you?
LC: Sam Sei Goon (English Title: Justice, My Foot!), starring Stephen Chow and directed by Johnny To.
CINEVUE: Are you looking forward to ‘07 AAIFF?
LC: I hope more Americans could have the chance to watch this film at the AAIFF screening.
Showtime for ETERNAL SUMMER is 2:30 pm on Saturday, July 28th Date at Asia Society.
Check out the trailer below:
Everyone knows that both musicals and irony have high overdose potential – consume too much of either one, and you’ll feel sickly for days. Overloading on syrupy musicals can deaden the senses + leave you weak, while over-indulging in irony will make one vomit the putridness right back out. A measured combination of the two, however, can do just the opposite – it can make you feel (alive, happy, in tune) once again. Maybe it’ll just make you feel, period. In its portrayal of three friends from Colma (a real California town marked by vast cemeteries, where the dead outnumber the living) on the brink of high school graduation, COLMA: THE MUSICAL triumphantly combines pathos + adolescent self-mockery, making the heart soar in multiple directions simultaneously. It opens today.
In this intentionally absurd surrealist sequence, dead couples rise again to ballroom dance while an oblivious L.A. Renigen & H.P. Mendoza warble, "This is my future main residence / Just deadwallking nowhere and everywhere / No one and everyone knows your name."
See what today's New York Times had to say:
The teenagers in “Colma: The Musical” don’t really burst into song, uvulas violently quivering and fists grasping for fame. For the most part they just slide into the music and lyrics as if slipping into the comfort of bed, far from the world and its racket. An itty-bitty movie with a great big heart, “Colma” is about three young people on the brink of that terrifying adventure called life, but it’s also about how we learn to give voice — joyfully, honestly, loudly — to the truest parts of ourselves, parts not everyone else hears....The coming-of-age story is universal, but too often it seems as if it’s the only story that American independent filmmakers are now remotely interested in. At first “Colma” looks a lot like more of the same, even if it didn’t play at Sundance: Three teenagers moping about mostly because, well, they’re teenagers. Yet a large part of what makes the movie refreshing, even when it’s not always especially fresh, is the matter-of-fact way it approaches youth as a given instead of a crucible. In “Colma” being young (or gay or Filipino) isn’t a recipe for automatic disaster; it’s what helps define these specific characters at this specific time. It’s a poignantly brief moment that — much like home — they may only really know after they leave.
The idea of youth as a cause for self-discovery works well with the movie’s belief in music as an intimate means of self-expression. Mr. Mendoza’s hooky songs, both the short and semisweet and the epically narrative, look as much outward as they do inward. Yet even when the songs convey a sense of the larger world, they remain as personal as a confession. When the three friends sing the movie’s opener, “Colma Stays,” both separately and together, they are literally traveling through a physical space (“Everybody has their call/And everyone in Colma ends up at the mall”) that has also shaped their interior landscapes (“Colma stays, a place I was born/Wanting, sad, forsaken, forlorn”).
See? COLMA blends the most magical-est elements of musical theater and irony: naivete and self-consciousness, into a surprisingly sweet marriage. It had the staff talking non-stop when it screened at the AAIFF last year.
(L.A. Renigen’s loveliness might have had something to do with our fixation, too, but I should stop now lest I give away too much.) Watch it at The Quad (34 W. 13th St.).
Posted by elisa.
AAIFF Emerging Director nominees Socheata Poeuv (nominated for her documentary NEW YEAR BABY) and Joy Dietrich (nominated for her narrative feature TIE A YELLOW RIBBON) sat down together for a video interview and talked about their personal journeys making their very first films. Many thanks to the Asia Society team for producing the video! Be the first to see the interview here!
Midnight Eye, the ever-reliable website about the latest and best in Japanese cinema, just posted an intriguing interview with Kazuhiro Soda, director of CAMPAIGN. Soda talks about the challenges of making the documentary, which has been gathering a lot of buzz at the many film festivals that it has travelled to. Catch the NY-based Soda in person as his film finally makes its NY Premiere at our Festival! His screening is on July 21, 4.30PM.