A Presentation of Center for Asian American Media
Screenings at Pacific Film Archive

Friday, March 16
7:00 pm: In Between Days So Yong Kim (U.S./Canada, South Korea, 2006). A recently arrived Korean immigrant in Toronto struggles to overcome isolation and teen heartbreak. "Painful, funny, unsentimental, perfectly measured in its ambiguities, it's exemplary low-budget filmmaking."-Village Voice
9:00 pm: American Zombie Grace Lee (U.S./South Korea, 2007). Grace Lee in Person. A "documentary" on one of the lesser-known marginalized communities of Los Angeles: zombies. From the director of The Grace Lee Project.

Saturday, March 17
4:00 pm: Made in Korea In-Soo Radstake (Netherlands, 2006). A Korean adoptee in Holland embarks on an awkward search for his Korean family. A humorous take on "finding oneself."
6:00 pm: It's Only Talk Ryuichi Hiroki (Japan, 2005). The director and star of Vibrator return with this romantic, late-summer tale of a young woman and her varied love interests.
8:30 pm: Summer Palace Lou Ye (China/France, 2006). Beijing in the '80s-Tiananmen Square, student unrest-is the backdrop of this surprisingly explicit love story from the director of Purple Butterfly.

Sunday, March 18
4:30 pm: Ghosts Nick Broomfield (U.K., 2006). Documentarian Broomfield turns to fiction for this story of illegal Chinese immigrants in England. "A note of solidarity with the disposessed."-Variety.
6:30 pm: Woman on the Beach Hong Sang-soo (South Korea, 2006). A lecherous film director stumbles through two romantic triangles in this acclaimed director's latest feature. "A wicked comedy of manners in the blue key of disappointment."-N.Y. Times

Tuesday, March 20
7:30 pm: Kabul Transit (David Edwards, Maliha Zulfacar, Gregory Whitmore (U.S., 2006). The historic city of Kabul is shown as you've never seen it before in this street-level documentary. "A mosaic of images and experiences that convey the sorrow, black humor, irony, and surprising hope that can exist in the most untenable of situations."-Film Society of Lincoln Center

Wednesday, March 21
7:30 pm: Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Hong Sang-soo (South Korea, 2001). Hong Sang-soo in person. An attractive television writer is torn between two remarkably uninspiring men in Hong Sang-soo's comedy of romantic errors. Recalling early Rohmer or Truffaut, it's Jules and Jim filtered through Seoul and soju.

Thursday, March 22
7:30 pm: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Mamoru Hosoda (Japan, 2006). Discovering you can travel through time is fun, unless you're a seventeen-year-old girl whose best friend is in love with you, in this Japanese anime based on a legendary 1965 teen novel. Made by talent from Princess Mononoke and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Friday, March 23
7:00 pm: The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief Jake Clennell (U.S., 2006). Welcome to the world of Japanese "host" clubs, where the "love-for-hire" tables are turned and women pay for men's company. Best Documentary, Edinburgh Film Festival.
8:45 pm: Do Over Cheng Yu-Chieh (Taiwan, 2006). Five characters variously involved in film, gangs, and drugs weave through contemporary Taipei in this ultra-stylish noir. Best Film, Best Cinematography, Taipei Film Festival.

Saturday, March 24
6:00 pm: Love for Share Nia Dinata (Indonesia, 2006). The rise of polygamy is dissected in this fascinating Indonesian drama. Best Film Award, Hawaii International Film Festival.
8:30 pm: A Dirty Carnival Yoo Ha (South Korea, 2006). A low-level gangster deals with family problems and "family" problems in a Korean Mean Streets. "Elevates the genre to an epic narrative level."-Variety

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is very happy to be part of the 25th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, presented by the Center for Asian American Media (formerly NAATA). On eight evenings, from Friday, March 16 through Saturday, March 24, fourteen features from this year's festival will be screened at the PFA Theater, which is located at 2575 Bancroft Way near Bowditch Street, on the southern edge of the UC Berkeley campus. General admission to the screenings is $10 per program before March 15, and $11 on or after March 15. Students, seniors and disabled persons are admitted for $9, and BAM/PFA and CAAM members for $8. Advance tickets for programs at PFA are available from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the BAM admissions desk, and evenings at the PFA Box Office, or by telephoning (510). 642-5249. For information about screenings in San Francisco and San Jose, or to purchase tickets online, please see http://www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org .

Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee, will appear in person on Friday, March 16 with her new film American Zombie, a "documentary" about a community of the living dead who are passing as humans in Los Angeles.

Hong Sang-soo, whom Chuck Stephens in The Village Voice called "the brightest filmmaker to emerge from South Korean cinema's recent boom years" will appear in person at a screening of his comedy, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors on Wednesday, March 21; the director's newest film, Woman on the Beach, named by Indiewire as the Best Undistributed Film of 2006, will be shown on Sunday, March 18.

The original title of A Dirty Carnival, by Korean director Yoo Ha, literally translates as "Mean Streets." Like Scorsese's film, it portays a petty gangster's complex personal life-this time in Seoul. PFA's SFIAAF selection also includes two films about the Korean diaspora. In-Soo Radstake is a Korean who was adopted into a Dutch family and grew up in Holland; Made in Korea details his awkward, and amusing, search for his birth parents. In Between Days, a beautiful and acclaimed first feature by So Yong Kim, centers on a lonely, young Korean woman who has relocated to Toronto.

The Mamoru Hosoda and collaborators who worked on such The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is based on a popular novel, and was a great box office hit in Japan one of the most acclaimed Japanese anime features

Based on a popular novel, and brought to the screen by talented filmmakers who had previously worked on Princess Mononoke and Neon Genesis Evangelion, the anime feature The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a box office hit in Japan last summer, and has been hailed at international festivals. It depicts the adventures of a schoolgirl whose time-travel talents allow her to rearrange the present.
It's Only Talk re-unites the director (Ryuichi Hiroki) and leading actress (Shinobu Terashima) of international festival favorite Vibrator for another poignant tale of a woman's difficult emotional life. Michael Atkinson, writing in The Village Voice, praises director Hiroki's ". . . Renoirian knack for evoking a huge, messy world in the smallest details."The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief is Jake Clennell's documentary about Japanese "host clubs", where women pay (exorbitantly) for the companionship of immaculately groomed boy toys in an atmosphere that's a complex setting where emotional need meets financial exploitation.

The late-1980s era of student unrest and the protests at Tiananmen Square forms the backdrop for Summer Palace, Lou Ye's drama of romance and political idealism. British documentarist Nick Broomfield's debut dramatic feature, Ghosts, uses nonprofessional actors to portray characters in his fictionalized study of the tragic drowning of 23 illegal Chinese immigrants in Englands Morecambe Bay.

In Love for Share, award-winning director Nia Dinata creates an intriguing drama from the intertwined lives of three women, each of whom must confront the resurgent trend of polygamy in Indonesia.

In Kabul Transit, filmmakers David Edwards, Gregory Whitmore, and Maliha Zulfacar move their camera through the city as they encounter a fascinating selection of residents, creating an engrossing, wry and ultimately haunting vision of a city that has been transformed by two decades of strife.

Winner of the Grand Prize at the Taipei Film Festival, Cheng Yu-Chieh's Do Over is a stylish story of filmmakers and gangsters whose paths cross on New Year's Eve in Taiwan's ultra-modern capital.

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