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International Asian Fest Starts Mar 14 by Tom Mayer
Jeremy Lin, the Chinese basketball phenom for the Houston Rockets, stars in the doc 'Linsanity'. photo: courtesy CAAMFest
SPONSORED BY THE CENTER OF ASIAN American Media (CAAM), the 30-year-old SF International Asian American Film Festival has been renamed CAAMFest. Now expanded to include live music and food at various venues, including the Castro Theater, the Great Star Theater (reopening after 40 years), New People Cinema, and Sundance Kabuki Cinema, all in SF, and at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, it should be even better.
Opening night features "Linsanity", a documentary about the life and rise to fame of the Chinese-born Houston Rockets basketball star Jeremy Lin. This Sundance Film Festival hit, which has received rave reviews, will play on March 14 at the Castro Theater.
The festival features 55 programs, including more than 100 films and videos. Premieres include films from Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, Pakistan, Philipines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. Opening night also includes a lavish party at the Asian Art Museum with actors, and filmmakers, including Linsanity director Evan Jackson Leong.
Closing night is the widely-acclaimed documentary "Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies", which includes movies from families made in 8mm, Super 8, and 16mm. The Centerpiece film is director Deepa Mehta's "Midnight's Children", following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Scene from 'Midnight's Children' written by famed Islam radical, of the positive kind, Salmon Rushdie. photo: courtesy CAAMFest
Several films such as "Linsanity", "Harana", "Mekong Hotel", "Memory of Forgotten War", "Seeking Haven", "Someone I Used to Know", "Nice Girls Crew 2", and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" are exclusive to the festival, until their later premieres in the U.S.
Workshops for filmmakers includes Ready, Set, Pitch! where budding filmmakers present their business plan and script for a new film. CAAMFest will present an unusual series on the Korean War, with films from both South and North Korea, as well as a panel discussion with academics, artists, and community leaders in "Memory of Forgotten War + Conversation".
"A Look Back" is series, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, which pays tribute to the history of Asian and Asian American filmmaking. In the series, Astro Boy Spotlight celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Astro Boy series. A Look Back also features a Royston Tan retrospective, taking a look at the controversial Singaporean director, and a restoration of the Chinese classic The Monkey King in 3-D.
For more information and tickets, go to CAA Media.