...But Is It Cinema?

APRIL 2007: Water Under the Bridge

It's been quite awhile since I last updated this journal, and already so many things have passed through. To wit: this entry, which was to have been dated Feb. 27, started something like this:

It's the weekend of the Academy Awards, and as usual, I'm not at another one of those Oscar parties that pop up around town. No, I'm multi-tasking yet again, watching the Oscar telecast and typing up directives to our program committee members while, unbelievably, scanning through yet more entries for this year's edition of VC FILMFEST.

Of course, much has happened since I first wrote that entry and gave up on it. As a visit to our website makes clear, I not only finished watching the mountain of screeners clogging up my desk, but actually watched more than a few of them with our program committee, and made decisions on all of them. Some choices were excruciating, as I really wished we had the programming space to include them. Others, just didn't seem to have that "X" factor that screams, "Include me in the program!" All of them, however, convinced us once again that Asian Pacific diasporic cinema is taking yet another step forward.

Besides the Oscars, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and Chicago Asian American Showcase have come and gone, providing a tantalizing taste of what's to come to Los Angeles in May; the third bienniel edition of the Vietnamese International Film Festival is currently in full swing; and a new crop of feature-length and short works are set to screen at the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. And on a more somber note, I haven't forgotten that the world exists outside the universe of festival organizing: an English major of Korean descent went 1-8-7-Rambo on a building full of students on the campus of Virginia Tech yesterday, killing over 30 before taking his own life. Other bloggers have covered this incident in greater detail and from other perspectives than I possibly can, so I'll depend on others to do that job. Needless to say, our Film Festival reflects the myriad perspectives of our communities, positive and otherwise. It's the "otherwise" that proves to be problematic to certain elements of our audience -- and which offers the closest encounter with filmed reality.

With the program now complete, I can now step back and comment of not only my own observations on programming, but those of our programmers as well. As we approach the start of Festival Week, these blog entries will be more frequent, the better to acquaint one and all with just some of the many works we've programmed this year. I'll be looking out for you all real soon.

Here are some facts, for those who may not already know:

VC FILMFEST: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
Presented by Honda
May 3 through 10, 2007

Directors Guild of America
Laemmle's Sunset 5 Theater
National Center for the Preservation of Democracy
Aratani/Japan America Theatre

161 productions
55 screening programs
8 days
And a whole lotta shakin' goin' on...

posted by Abraham Ferrer @ 7:54 PM