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!

Comments (1) Jul 02 2009

Love Exposure

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:

HOUSE [part 2]

Nishimura, Iguchi and crew provide an entertaining Q&A for VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL, following the film’s 6/26 World Premiere:

VAMPIRE GIRL [part 2] [part 3]

Join us for our final four days!

Comments (0) Jul 02 2009