필라델피아 아시안 영화제 7일 동안 열려

한국인 2세가 주관하는 아시안 영화제가 필라델피아에서 11월 3일 목요일부터 8일 화요일까지 열린다.

개막작품으로는 나이 서른이 되기 전에 결혼하라는 부모의 압력을 받는 LA 의 광고회사 간부인 청년이 인터넷을 통해 서울에서 사랑을 발견한다는 내용의 로코(로맨틱코메디) 단편영화인 ‘Wedding Place” 가 상영되며, 가족들로 인해너무 바빠 연애할 짬이 없는 상태에서 모처럼 찾게 된 사랑을 잃어버릴 위험에 처한 전문직의 여자의 이야기를 그린 또 하나의 로코영화 ‘Almost Perfect’ 와 Noe-Noir 장르의 ‘Love’,  그리고 LA 지역 갱들의 이야기를 그린 힙합 영화 ‘Bang Bang’ 등이 주목을 끌고 있다.

영화제를 주관하는 Joe Kim 은 필라델피아 한인연합교회의 김성은 목사의 차남으로 템플대에서 영화를 전공하고 샌디에고, 달라스, 시카고 등지에서 열리는 아시안 영화제에 참가하며 필라델피아 아시안 영화제를 기획하게 되었다고 한다.  7일 동안 열리는 영화제는 10개의 장편영화와 18개의 단편영화를 보여준다.  영화는 필라델피아 시내, University City 에 있는 International House 의 이브라힘 (Ibrahim) 극장에서 상영된다.   (Daniel Kim)

Seven Asian nights in a film festival through Tuesday

By Tirdad Derakhshani

Inquirer Staff Writer Posted: Thu, Nov. 3, 2011, 3:00 AM

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20111103_Seven_Asian_nights_in_a_film_festival_through_Tuesday.html?viewAll=y

Joe Kim spent most of his 20s suffering though "survival jobs."

"I worked as a temp, once even at an insurance company," the 33-year-old Cheltenham native recalls. His Dilbertian labors helped support his passion for filmmaking.

Kim has yet to make his first feature, but he already has made his mark with the dozens of movies he has hosted as founder of the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. Now in its fourth year, the festival runs through Tuesday with screenings of 10 feature films and 18 shorts.

Created with little money and a lot of help from friends and family, the festival has become one of the city's freshest film events.

 Previously tucked into a single weekend, the festival, which also will feature five free receptions and live music, will be spread over seven nights.

Most films this year will be shown at the Ibrahim Theater at the International House in University City, with some screenings and events taking place at the Asian Arts Initiative in Chinatown and the Prince Music Theater on the Avenue of the Arts.

"This year, we've really blown it out with more films and more days," says Kim.

Kim says he expects attendance to grow dramatically this year.

"Last year, we ended up scheduling it during the opening week of the Philadelphia Film Festival," says the Cheltenham High School graduate, "and that was not good."

He hopes to attract cinephiles from the larger festival, which winds down this week.

Kim, who studied film at Temple University, says he was inspired to create the festival after being invited to screen short films that he had made at the more than half a dozen Asian American festivals around the country.

He says he was impressed by the vibrant cultural scene at festivals in San Diego, Dallas, and Chicago.

"I went around all these Asian film festivals, and I realized how much it was helping the community," he says.

"They offer a forum to watch and discuss interesting films about Asian Americans that you wouldn't see otherwise."

Kim's interest in revitalizing community spirit may be hereditary: His father, who moved here after fleeing North Korea in the early 1960s, was the pastor at the Korean United Church of Philadelphia until he retired seven years ago.

The Asian American festival opens Thursday with one of its biggest, most mainstream projects, Wedding Palace.

A sumptuously shot romantic dramedy, it's about a Korean American advertising executive in Los Angeles (Brian Tee) whose family pressures him to marry before he turns 30. He finds love in a most unexpected place when he meets, via the Web, a woman in Seoul, Korea. (Oldboy's Hye-jeong Kang).

"I guess you could call it the Korean American version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding," Kim says of the film, which he hopes will have wide appeal. "It even features [comedian] Margaret Cho in a small but meaty role," Kim says with enthusiasm.

The fest is bookended by another romantic comedy, Almost Perfect, by New York writer-director Bertha Bay-Sa Pan (Face). It features the stunning Kelly Hu (X-2, The Vampire Diaries) as a too-busy-for-romance professional woman whose dysfunctional family threatens to ruin her one chance at love.

Celebrated Hong Kong action star Edison Chen (Infernal Affairs, The Dark Knight) plays her less-than-supportive brother.

"I got the idea for the story at a friend's wedding reception, when I met all these interesting characters," says Pan, who was born in New Brunswick and raised in Taipei, Taiwan.

Love - and a lot of steamy sex - is featured in the festival's centerpiece film, The Girl From the Naked Eye, a stylish neo-noir thriller cowritten, coproduced and starring former kung fu and san-shu kickboxing champion Jason Yee.

Set in the Los Angeles nightclub scene, it's about a bodyguard whose best friend, a call girl, is found murdered.

"It's a big first feature," admits Yee of the $1.5 million picture, which costars Dominique Swain, Gary Stretch, Ron Yuan, and Sasha Grey.

Love, familial and romantic, also is explored in Indian-born experimental filmmaker Sonali Gulati's documentary, I Am, a personal and political exploration of homosexuality in India, which did not decriminalize gay behavior until 2009.

In the film, Gulati, who was born and raised in New Delhi, returns home after her mother's death.

"My inability to come out to my mother as a lesbian before she died serves as the primary motivation to making the film," says Gulati, who earned an MFA in film from Temple and now teaches film at Virginia Commonwealth University.

She says interviews with "parents of other gay and lesbian people living in India" complement her personal story.

Hip-hop infuses one of the festival's most impressive movies, Bang Bang, which writer-director Byron Chan made for less than $70,000.

Described as the Asian American Boyz n the Hood, the drama is an intimate look at Asian American gangs in Los Angeles.

Bang Bang stars Vietnamese-American hip-hop star and actor Thai Ngo (Baby) as a rapper who wants to break away from gang life to pursue his music.

"I based a lot of the stories on my own experience with gang members," says Chang, 26, a San Jose, Calif., native whose mother, a working-class single mother, emigrated to California from China.

"A lot of [gang] movies are about race," he says, "but class is a bigger issue" in the film, says Chang, who studied film at the University of California in San Diego.

"I'm especially proud that a lot of the actors in the film are real gang members and former gang members," he says.

Joe Kim says he has great hopes for the festival, which has grown from a part-time passion to a full-time job.

He'll also continue to direct his own shorts. None of his own works, he says, is featured in the festival.

"I'm not at the level of these filmmakers," he says. "Yet."

Contact staff writer Tirdad Derakhshani at 215-854-2736 or tirdad@phillynews.com.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20111103_Seven_Asian_nights_in_a_film_festival_through_Tuesday.html?viewAll=y#ixzz1cek0U5so