Eddie Mui, Nadine Truong, Brian Yang, Evan Jackson Leong, Allen Lu, Ken Tanabe
By William Kustiono
On July 23rd 2013, Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) hosted a press conference at the Museum of Chinese in America. This year’s AAIFF is presenting 26 feature films and 44 short films about Asians and Asian Americans. These movies feature characters from 18 different countries such as Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, and the USA. From these feature films, one will be making its world premiere, another will be making its international premiere, six will be making its U.S. premiere, seven for their East Coast premiere, and the last eight for their New York premiere. This AIFF aims at giving the audience a comprehensive collection of the Asian and Asian American indie cinemas.
Nadine Truong, Brian Yang, Evan Jackson, Allen Lu, Ken Tanabe
The Taiwan Cinema Days is going to showcase in the AAIFF. This showcase represents Taiwanese films across genres and generations, and also features this year’s greatest achievements for Taiwanese cinema, displaying the developing talents in local and translational productions. This is a major breakthrough for the evolution of the cinema of Taiwan. This program targets to show the legacies of the cinema and the creative and artistic intellectuals of Taiwanese directors.
Brian Yang, Evan Jackson, Allen Lu
In the press conference, there are several panelists such as the filmmakers, producers, and director. Some of the discussions are about the upcoming films in the festival. Each panelist is given a question related to their personal feeling during the movie making. The media was able to watch film clips of Linsanity and Hafu: The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan.
Linsanity is a documentary movie about Jeremy Lin, the Harvard graduate student who manages to enter the world’s most popular basketball organization, NBA. Director Evan Jackson Leong, Producers Brian Yang, and Allen Lu attended the press conference to talk about their journey of making Linsanity. They expressed a total relief and happiness because they were able to finish the film after a long and lengthy journey. The film documents Jeremy’s life since his childhood in Palo Alto, California. Brian explained how this movie shows Jeremy’s hardship and his struggles to overcome discouragements, especially racism against him. Director Evan commented that this movie is a good example of hardship and competency that can help you achieving your dream.
Min Ding
Hafu: The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan is a movie about a mixed race within the Japanese culture. These mixed race people are called Hafus. This film features people who grew up in Japan, but are considered as foreigners. They are always questioned for their true identity. Most of these Hafus are identified as an outsider to Japanese society. They are constantly worried because if they make a mistake, they will be disowned and left on the streets. Some of the mixed Japanese actors are Korean-Japanese, Venezuelan-Japanese, Ghanaian-Japanese, and Australian-Japanese. These hafu are question about their identity not only in Japan, but all across the world. In this movie, the director and producers hope the audience can see the bigger picture.
Iemi Hernandez-Kim
At the end of the press conference, the remaining producers were introduced and explained their work that will be presented in the film festival. We hope to see the audience express their contentment and satisfaction when they watch the films.
For more information: http://www.asiancinevision.org/aaiff/
Dongnan Chen
David Hou
Kayla Wong
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