By Will Bowen

Asian Film Fest greets its 15th year

When is the last time you went to a movie theater with friends and family and went away feeling satisfied or uplifted?

Alas, movie-going, once one of the great American past times — like Sunday drives in the country — seems to be dying out.

Theater folk, in response, are trying all kinds of new gimmicks to entice people back — like fewer, but larger, comfortable reclining seats or waiters who bring you sushi and wine.

Fortunately, Lee Ann Kim, a former local TV news anchorwoman and the founder and executive director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, is on fire to change all of that and bring back good, old fashioned, illuminating, community-building movie-going.

“Fewer people are going to movie theaters these days,” Kim said. “They would rather stay home with Netflix and their big screen TV or engage in the insular experience of watching images [YouTube] on their computer or iPad. But we like to look at movies as an activity that reaches out and engages the community.”

Although the movie industry is doing well, theater owners are scrambling. It’s a far cry from the days when blockbuster movies were well attended and would run for weeks or months at a place like the Loma Theater (now a Bookstar), on Rosecrans Street in Point Loma.

“Our goal is to open people’s eyes to the possibilities of cinema,” Kim said, adding that she and other organizers want to share Asian cinema with American audiences, because the storytelling aspect is different than what they’ve come to expect out of Hollywood-based films.

“We hope to bring back the sense of community that theater-going once promoted — where you can laugh and cry with a group of people who entered the theater together as strangers but bond by their common experience,” she said. “And we want to contribute to the growth of San Diego as an international city, with an improved quality of life, by exposing it to the diversity of humanity through films from 21 different countries.”

The San Diego Asian Film Festival, now in its 15th year, is the largest film festival in San Diego. It’s the second largest Asian Film Festival in the nation, just behind the one in New York City. Kim expects upwards of 20,000 people to attend the upcoming festival, which will convene for ten days this month from Nov. 6 –15, and feature 140 movies showing at 9 different venues.

Kim, originally from Chicago, attended the University of Maryland where she majored in broadcast journalism. After graduation, she worked in TV news all over the country before coming to San Diego’s Channel 10 News in 1996. In 2000, while still at Channel 10, she launched the Asian Film Festival and in 2008, she left broadcast news altogether to devote herself to the festival full time.

“I loved the news,” she said. “I loved telling news stories. I started the festival to have a platform to tell the untold stories of Asian America — which is really part of the larger story of the American experience.”

Kim noted that although our society depends upon media for its information, Asian American stories and entertainers only make up 2 percent of the film industry.

“I wanted to address this basic inequality,” she said.

While Kim admitted that her television career helped open doors for her, her dedication and journalistic resourcefulness also led to the festival’s success.

“Starting this festival was the hardest thing I have ever done,” she said. “I did not have a clue as to how to proceed … I think that even if you don’t know what you are doing, if you love what you are doing, and have passion, things will line up by themselves and fall into place.”

For the last three years, Kim has had the help of Brian Hu, the artistic director of the festival.

“I’m the guy who picks the movies,” Hu said. “I watch hundreds of submitted movies, travel the world, and attend festivals looking for films that best represent Asian cinema — ones that offer a different voice, celebrate diversity, or break our expectations of what film is about.”

Prior to joining the festival, Hu was an online film critic in Los Angeles, where he also earned a doctorate from UC Los Angeles in cinematic studies. His research was on the history of Hong Kong and Taiwanese films.

“I think that the films we offer are some of the most exciting films in the world today,” Hu said. “Asian filmmaking is at the forefront when it comes to action thrillers, martial arts movies, and romantic comedies. They are very different from the movies made by Hollywood. I think it is very important that people see that there are other ways to make a film than what we are used to.”

Hu said he is most excited about an East Indian selection this year called “Meet the Patels.” He said the film first started as a home movie.

“It’s a romantic comedy about how a man’s family steps in to help him fulfill his love life,” he said.

“Meet the Patels,” which is the festival’s closing night film, will be showing at Sherwood Hall at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla at 7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14.

“I also like a film called ‘Hard Day,’” Hu said. “It’s a Korean film made in the Hollywood action style of the 1940s — a style which Korean film makers have really mastered.”

The festival opened Nov. 6 with a Martin Scorsese-produced film, “Revenge of the Green Dragons,” at the Reading Cinemas in the Gaslamp. The gangster film is set in the 1980s and based in New York’s Chinatown and features an all-star cast of rising Asian American actors.

The centerpiece of the festival, which will be shown Saturday, Nov. 8 at 1:30 p.m. at Shiley Theater on the University of San Diego campus, is the pilot episode of a new Asian American sitcom called, “Fresh Off The Boat.” It’s the first Asian American sitcom on TV in over 20 years.

The festival also offers a day of live Asian American dance, called MOVEfest, Nov. 9 at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m. at The School of Creative and Performing Arts, located at 2425 Dusk Dr. in Paradise Valley.

There will also be a number of LGBT-themed films screened throughout the festival, including a session devoted to queer Korean cinema, held at the new Structural and Materials Engineering Building on the UC San Diego campus Nov. 13 – 15. In addition to the film retrospective, Remembering Queer Korea will also feature an international symposium and art exhibit.

The gala awards event is slated for Saturday, Nov. 8 at the Town and Country Hotel in Mission Valley.

A festival badge, which grants admittance to all events, is $250, or $150 if you are a member of the Pacific Arts organization (membership is $60 a year). Individual tickets are $12 per film with a four-pack offered at $44. Proceeds help fund REEL Voices — a documentary filmmaking program for San Diego high school students.

As a bonus, every weekday of the festival at 4 p.m., there will be a free film screening at the festival’s host theater, Hazard Center’s Ultra Star Cinema in Mission Valley.

For further information visit pac-arts.org or sdaff.org.

—Will Bowen writes about arts and culture. You can reach him at [email protected].