Asian American Film Festival Takes You From Rural China to LA

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 21 July 2016 14:44

Written by Renzo Adler

Spa Night

Presented by Asian CineVision, the 39th Annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) focuses on films made by and about Asian Americans and features a plethora of touching, shocking, and thought provoking films. The festival will take place in New York City from July 21 to July 30, 2016. Screenings will be held at Cinema Village East (181-189 2nd Avenue), Asia Society (725 Park Avenue), Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35th Ave, Astoria), and Flushing Town Hall (13735 Northern Boulevard, Flushing).

Opening AIFF is Spa Night, which had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival where main lead, Joe Seo, won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. Set in LA’s Korea Town, Spa Night addresses the issue of gay sexual awakening within a family with Korean immigrant parents that have high hopes for their son.

Based on the incredible true story of Jackie Chan's parents, A Tale of Three Cities  is an epic yet intimate account of love at a time of epochal upheaval. The new film from Hong Kong cinema's golden couple, Mabel Cheung and Alex Law, spans decades - from the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s to the beginning of Mao's era in the early 1950s - as it follows one couple who defied all odds and kept their passion alive.

As part of the festival, there are several special brackets of films. The We Are Beautiful shorts program features brief but powerful films addressing issues of social, cultural, and sexual identity. In Speechless in Japan a deaf and speech-impaired cross-dressing outcast in Tokyo bears the burden of social judgment with extraordinary grace, inducing people to finally listen to his/her story, shattering societal expectations in the process. Mumbai Mornings follows a humble, but driven, Indian jewelry polisher-turned-ultramarathoner shows us how the world has opened to him as he runs through the city he calls home.

This is only a small sampling of the films at the AAIFF, which offers a truly wide selection of fascinating features.

To learn more, go to: http://aaiff.org/2016/

Asian American International Film Festival
July 21 - 30, 2016

Various Locations

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