March 29, 2005

48th San Francisco International Film Festival to Present Diverse Slate of Films from and About Asia; Films from Eight Asian Countries with Focus on Malaysia

The 48th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21-May 5) will present a variety of narrative and documentary shorts and features from eight Asian countries representing the region's multicultural, political and religious identity and its burgeoning independent film scene. These films include a strong list of premieres, award winners and nominees.

The distinct lineup from Malaysia's inaugural presence in the Festival includes two films reflecting the intermingling of cultures between the country's Chinese, Indian and Malay ethnicities: PRINCESS OF MOUNT LEDANG (Saw Teong Hin), Malaysia's first Foreign Language Oscar submission, is a Malay-language period epic of struggle between kingdoms and the romance between a Malaccan general and a Javanese princess and SEPET (Yasmin Ahmad) deals with controversial cross-cultural relationships through a bittersweet love story of a Chinese boy and a Malay girl; it is already a success in Malaysia, though some of its content was censored.

The cutting edge of new Malaysian independent cinema is represented by Amir Muhammad's documentaries: TOKYO MAGIC HOUR, an intimate gay love letter in the form of an experimental film and THE YEAR OF LIVING VICARIOUSLY, documenting the making of Riri Reza's political epic (GIE, 2005) against the backdrop of Indonesia's first democratic presidential election. Other selections include Malaysia's first Tamil film about a girl's struggle to have the opportunity for a college education, THE GRAVEL ROAD (Deepak Kumaran Menon), and the world premiere of MONDAY MORNING GLORY (Woo Ming Jin), offering an offbeat indie approach to a movie about terrorists and the pursuing authorities. On Sunday, May 1, the panel Malaysian Cinema: A New Independence will explore the emergence and features of the new Malaysian cinema with some of its key filmmakers attending the Festival.

Indonesia's leading filmmaker, Garin Nugroho (…AND THE MOON DANCES, SFIFF 1997), returns with the North American premiere of OF LOVE AND EGGS — a gentle human comedy about the longing of three children for absent family members, tinged with the tension between Islamic tradition and modern mores within a marketplace community in Jakarta. Leonard Retel Helmrich's SHAPE OF THE MOON (Netherlands), winner of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, documents an Indonesian family navigating their country's myriad partitions — between urban and rural, Muslim and Christian, old world and new.

Thailand's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film, THE OVERTURE (Itthi-soonthorn Wichailak), tells the story of a musician's struggle against a repressive government for a personal identity within his country's musical tradition.

Films from India are BLACK FRIDAY (Anurag Kashyap), an epic portrayal of the complex politics and religious strife behind the Bombay terrorist bombings in 1993 and CHOKHER BALI: A PASSION PLAY (Rituparno Ghosh), a melodrama about a turn-of-the-century Bengali widow that serves as a political allegory for the country while exploring the shifting eternal triangles of four young friends. The Indian short contending for a Golden Gate Award (GGA) is the Oscar-nominated LITTLE TERRORIST (Ashvin Kumar, England/India), about a boy who mistakenly crosses the India/Pakistan border.

Two shorts from Pakistan, which are also GGA nominees, are DEATH IN THE GARDEN OF PARADISE (Nurjahan Akhlaq, Canada/Pakistan), a short in the Festival's New Visions Category offering a camera roaming through Lahore and Malko, a desert necropolis, and THE ECSTATIC (Till Passow, Germany/Pakistan), which documents a pilgrimage to the shrine of a Sufi saint. THE WORLD (Jia Zhangke, China), with its romantic tapestry of the lives of employees of a Beijing theme park, represents a microcosm of China's exploding economy and increasingly multicultural society. Two GGA-nominated documentaries further explore the vast land of China—DELAMU (Tian Zhuangzhuang) offers a journey down an ancient travel route, and CHANGING THE TASTE OF MUD (Violet Feng and Serene Fang, China/USA), a world premiere that explores the birth of Dragon Harbor, a city that defied the Chinese government by breaking the longstanding barrier between peasants and citizens. From Hong Kong comes BEYOND OUR KEN by one of the city's hottest new directors—Pang Ho Cheung—who mixes an anti-cad revenge comedy with a study of 21st-century relationships.

Films from and about South Korea are 3-IRON, a display of the sensitive side of cinema's bad boy, Kim Ki-Duk, with its nearly silent love story tinged with alienation, forbidden desire and the use of golf balls as weapons; 1998 SFIFF Akira Kurosawa Award recipient Im Kwon-Taek offers LOW LIFE — a stunning saga of corruption in '50s and '60s South Korea; the U.S. premiere of MY MOTHER, THE MERMAID (Park Heung-shik), about a young woman's visit to her childhood home, during which, in an extraordinary time shift, she witnesses her parents' budding romance; and THE INTRUDER (Claire Denis, France), a globehopping film about longing for the other side of the world and for a life that is always elsewhere.

Representing Japan are films of two polar natures: INTO THE PICTURE SCROLL: THE TALE OF YAMANAKA TOKIWA (Haneda Sumiko), a North American premiere, from a veteran filmmaker largely unknown in the U.S., about a famous scroll painting of the Edo period whose story is brought to life in way that masterfully redefines the art of documentary; and from the outrageous Takashi Miike, IZO, a cavalcade of carnage about an immortal samurai on a killing spree, which plays in the Festival's Midnight Movies section. Also part of this series is the regionally produced trilogy of terror THREE…EXTREMES (Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike and Park Chan-Wook, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea). Another film with Japanese interest is THE FALL OF FUJIMORI (Ellen Perry, USA/Peru/Japan), a revealing portrait of the controversial Peruvian political figure and his career, made possible by the filmmaker's extraordinary access to Fujimori and his family.

The 48th San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 21—May 5, 2005 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, the Home of the Festival, the Castro Theatre, the Palace of Fine Arts, Kanbar Hall at the Jewish Community Center and the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco; the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley; and Landmark's Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto. Tickets for San Francisco Film Society members will be available on March 29 and for the general public on April 5. To purchase tickets and for ticket information log on to www.sffs.org, call 925.866.9559 or visit the Main Ticket Outlet, located in the atrium of the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, 1881 Post Street or the Satellite Ticket Outlet at the Virgin Megastore, 2 Stockton Street. For up-to-date Festival information log on to www.sffs.org or call 415.561.5000.

The 48th San Francisco International Film Festival (April 21—May 5, 2005) is presented by the San Francisco Film Society, a nonprofit arts and educational organization dedicated to celebrating international film and the moving image.