It’s only been three weeks since the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival ended, but we’ve finally uploaded all our remaining guest Q&As and other goodies to the Subway Cinema channel on YouTube, which can be accessed here. You can even become a subscriber, which will give you automatic notification on any future updates.
Every year, the audience at the New York Asian Film Festival votes on its favorite films by filling out a ballot after every screening. We’ve just totaled the votes and the winner of the NYAFF 2009 Audience Award is:
And a very special mention for HOUSE, which garnered a HUGE number of votes for a 30 year old film.
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And that’s all she wrote for 2009. A big “thank you” to all the distributors and sponsors who helped make this happen, but an even bigger, even more enormous, industrial-sized THANK YOU to every single audience member who bought a ticket. You guys are the reason we do this festival and every ticket you bought was a way of saying “Yes! We want more Asian movies in New York City!” And you were heard, because it looks like we’ll be back next year. Your generosity, your support, your unbridled enthusiasm and your hunger for fun are what keep this festival alive and what makes it special. You’re not “just” the audience: you’re the reason this festival exists. We couldn’t do it without you. And we wouldn’t want to anyways.
With a sigh of sadness and relief, the 2009 New York Asian Film Festival ends today, with our final screening, the World Premiere of Sion Sono’s BE SURE TO SHARE, starring actor Eiji Okuda. Sono and Okuda are here in NY with us, and will provide us with what’s sure to be a titillating post-screening Q&A session. Check our YouTube channel for the video of that some time later this week.
Prior to the screening, our 2009 jury announced their picks for the official competition awards.
And the 2009 Grand Jury Prize goes to Sion Sono’s LOVE EXPOSURE!
Congratulations to all the winners. Watch this space this week for the announcement of the winner of the Audience Award prize! And thanks to all our sponsors, volunteers, partners and most of all, our audience, for allowing us to bring you the kinds of movies that we love to watch, in the hope that some of you might enjoy them as well.
It might feel like it’s all winding down here at the New York Asian Film Festival, but we’ve got a full holiday weekend in store for New Yorkers looking for some Asian cinema entertainment.
Two more Japanese guests will join us this weekend, both of them familiar figures on the Asian cinema landscape.
Director Sion Sono comes to town for not one, but two premieres. The first is Friday night’s sold-out show of his four-hour epic about love, sex, panty photography, cults and murder, LOVE EXPOSURE. A few tickets remain for the Japan Cuts screening on July 7th, which Sono will also attend, so grab them while you can!
For filmgoers who might not be as adventurous in their screening choices—or with not enough time to devote to a four-hour film—we’ve got Sono’s newest film, BE SURE TO SHARE, making its World Premiere on Sunday night at 8:15 pm, with both Sono and lead actor Eiji Okuda in attendance. Okuda has been in everything from low-budget films to big epics to TV dramas, and he’s a director himself, with four award-winning and critically-acclaimed films under his belt. Join us Sunday night for our closing ceremony, jury awards and what’s sure to be a lively Q&A with both men.
And don’t forget that we’ve still got a half-day of screenings at the IFC Center, including newly-added midnight shows of two popular titles from earlier in the fest: the 1977 psychedelic horror trip-out HOUSE and Yoshihiro Nishimura’s critically-acclaimed high school monster romp VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL! Tickets available NOW!
We’ve reached the point in this year’s New York Asian Film Festival where everybody is exhausted, all of us want it to end, but we need to suck it up and make it thru the final weekend. And what a final weekend it is, as we move all our crap from the IFC Center up to Japan Society, and present a weekend packed full of Japanese film goodness, co-presented by JS’s Japan Cuts festival.
There’s the award-winning, critically-acclaimed look at a marriage through a microscope, ALL AROUND US; the tear-jerking saga of a death row guard forced to take on a despicable job in order to provide his new wife with a honeymoon, VACATION; the hilarious screwball comedy by hitmaker Koki Mitani, THE MAGIC HOUR; Sion Sono’s four-hour long epic of love, death, cults, religion, sex, porn, under-skirt photography and everything in-between, LOVE EXPOSURE (already sold out but showing again on 7/7); and the World Premiere of Sono’s latest, BE SURE TO SHARE, the latter two films with legendary bad boy director Sono in attendance for a post-film Q&A. Plus legendary leading man Eiji Okuda for BE SURE TO SHARE. Plus repeat performances of PRIDE, 20TH CENTURY BOYS 1 and 2, and the audience favorite FISH STORY.
Get your tickets online or save the $2.50 ticketing fee by walking over to 47th and First and picking up tickets at the box office.
And here, for your viewing pleasure, are some more links to our ongoing series of YouTube presentations of post-film Q&As and pre-film intros! Subscribe to our channel here.
Yoshihiro Nishimura & Noboru Iguchi introduce Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 film HOUSE, after a sixteen hour plane ride:
Over on Salon, Andrew O’Hehir not only sums up the depressing state of Asian movie distribution in America but he also recommends seven films from this year’s NYAFF:
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1) WRITTEN BY - “…a delirious supernatural melodrama with overtones of Charlie Kaufman-style meta-ness.” (No more screenings)
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2) LOVE EXPOSURE - “I really cannot explain to you how silly and great LOVE EXPOSURE is; one of the year’s biggest discoveries.” (The July 3rd screening is sold out! There is one more screening on Tuesday, July 7 @ 6:30pm at the Japan Society) (Buy tickets)
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3) FISH STORY - “A terrifically generous and enjoyable movie.” (Last screening: Thursday, July 2 @ 6:15pm at the Japan Society) (Buy tickets)
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4) DREAM - “Prolific Korean director Kim Ki-Duk defies all easy classification, and this combination of haunted, art-house love story with fatalistic, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET high concept captures that perfectly.” (Last screening: Wednesday, July 1 @ 7:30pm at the IFC Center) (Buy tickets)
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5) EXODUS - “If I tell you this is a Hong Kong movie about a secret plot by women to kill all men, it’s going to sound like over-the-top exploitation. Instead, Pang Ho-cheung’s film is a cool, modernist noir that depicts one of Asia’s most crowded cities as an emotionally drained and empty landscape, straight out of Antonioni or George Lucas’ THX 1138.” (No screenings left)
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6) BREATHLESS - “Hard to sit through, this masterfully directed and marvelously acted picture is impossible to forget.” (Last screening: Thursday, July 2 @ 2pm at the IFC Center) (Buy tickets)
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7) IP MAN - “I don’t think it’s literally true that Ip kicked the Imperial Japanese Army’s entire ass single-handed, but what the hell. It makes for a well-paced and satisfying piece of Chinese-nationalist pulp.” (No screenings left)
Due to popular demand—and the holiday weekend—we’ve added two midnight shows to the night of Thursday, July 2nd! And they’re two of the best Japanese genres films we’ve screened this year.
Thursday, July 2nd @ 11:55 pm, IFC Center
HOUSE! Witness the psychedelic madness of director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 debut film. You will see a piano eat a schoolgirl! You will see a severed head bite a schoolgirl on the butt! You will see the nude bodies of girls who are a little bit too young to be comfortable! Last chance to see the gorgeous Janus Films HDCam master on the big screen in NY! Tickets available here.
Thursday, July 2nd @ 12:05 am (Friday morning), IFC Center
VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL! High school love meets hard gore! Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s latest film wowed NY audiences at its World Premiere last Friday, and tonight’s show is also sold out. See it for the first time, or the third. And wear a raincoat. Tickets available here.
Today was the first screening of FISH STORY (my personal favorite film in the festival). The house was packed and the audience cheered when it ended. The result of the audience poll? Almost every single person gave it a 5, across the board. That’s the highest possible score. There’s one more screening of FISH STORY up at Japan Society on Thursday, July 2 at 6:15pm.You can buy tickets here. And here’s the complete blurb about the movie - it’s short because we don’t want to ruin any of the surprises:
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“In 1975, the year before the Sex Pistols released their first album, a Japanese punk band called Gekirin recorded their single, “Fish Story” and then they broke up, never to record again. Thirty-seven years later, in 2012, their song saves the world. This is the tenth film from Yoshihiro Nakamura and we’re not saying any more about it.
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Because it really happened. A punk single from 1975 traveled to the future and saved us all. Any more information than that would deprive you of the surprises and the fun of watching one of the year’s best films. It’s a movie that reminds us of something we all forget from time to time: your life has a purpose. Even if you never understand it, you’re here for a reason.”
Giant Robot came by yesterday to do a photo shoot with Yoshihiro Nishimura, Noboru Iguchi, Tak Sakaguchi, Isao Karasawa and Tsuyoshi Kazuno. And they took to the streets, horrifying all New Yorkers who saw them. (Who are these people? Read about them here)
We’re busy as little beavers here, hosting a psychedelic sold-out show for Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 schoolgirls-get-eaten-by-a-haunted-witch-house movie HOUSE and generally running ourselves ragged.
In the meantime, feast your hungry eyes on our newly-uploaded YouTube links below.
Wai Ka-fai talks about 1998’s THE LONGEST NITE, and his long and influential career as a member of Johnnie To’s Milkyway team with festival programmer, co-director, and animated mascot Grady Hendrix:
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Jul 29 2009
