Looking back on last January, the 2008 edition of the Sundance Film Festival was cold in so many different ways. Most obvious, it was COLD. I thought that Berlin in February was cold enough as the weather during the Berlinale and European Film Market never gets above 35 degree farenheit. That was until I started coming to Park City in January -- the weather up in the mountains make Berlin feel like a resort town. Perhaps that is why I view attending the two major "Dance" film festivals, Sundance and Slamdance, as a necessary evil: for Asian Pacific American filmmakers, a coveted slot in either of these two festivals insure an appreciable degree of exposure and expanded filmmaking opportuntiy down the road. And, inclusion in either festival serves a larger purpose in validating our right to "belong."
"Belonging" and "cold" were synonymous in other ways as well in Park City. With a far slimmer than normal slate of Asian Pacific American works at Sundance, it really felt as is APAs were being frozen out of the proceedings. Imagine the unfair pressure placed on director Jennifer Phang and the crew of her second feature-length film, HALF-LIFE, as the standard-bearer of APA cinema -- as there were precious few other feature-length works by APAs in any of the marquee sections of the Festival (Competition, Spectrum, or Premieres), a prominent APA presence was clearly missing. Thankfully, the handful of short films programmed as part of the Sundance slate brought much-needed levity to the proceedings. Seeing veteran filmmakers like Julia Kwan (SMILE) and Tad Nakamura (PILGRIMAGE) was reassuring, even as the rest of the Asian Pacific slate intimated an emphasis on emerging vioces and, in some cases, cinematic visions that began their lives on web-based delivery systems.
A perfect case-in-point is New Yorker Kenneth Hung, who brought two blatantly political works of animation to Sundance in GAS ZAPPERS (a wickedly envisioned take on the effects of alternate fuel development on both the economy and the war on terror) and BECAUSE WASHINGTON IS HOLLYWOOD FOR UGLY PEOPLE (which willfully skewers all the then-candidates for President). BECAUSE WAHSINGTON... also had the unintended effect of illustrating the limits of agitprop and advocacy filmmaking: not two weeks after the conclusion of Sundance activities, all but four of the candidates dropped out of the race, rendering the piece either prophetic or irrelevant. I like to think that it is the former, but those who don't take care to read into the meaning of the ingenious cut-out animation might dismiss it as the latter.
Politics, advocacy, and social engineering are at the heart of two distinctive non-fiction features that were nested in Sundance's World Documentary Competition. The first, DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT: A NATION'S JOURNEY by Sabiha Sumar and Sachithanandam Sathananthan, offered a wildly contrasting portrait of a Pakistani society in turmoil even as President Pervez Musharraf wrestles with enacting the institution of nominally democratic principals to a country that is essentially run as a dictatorship. A decidely awkward dinner party bringing together the president and the co-directors elicits a strained conversation detailing Musharraf's rationale for using dictatorial tactics in uniting a country fractured along ethnic, class and religious faultlines. In areas far from the urban areas, however, college students, peasant farmers, religious extremists hold vastly different views on their country and what it would take to eradicate decades of political infighting. A vital sidebar to this ongoing soap opera is the return of former Pakistani President and exile Benazir Bhutto, who herself has not been immune from scandal and inefficiency during her rule. The film then parallels Musharraf's struggles with the sense of "promise" that attends an anticipated return to Pakistan of Bhutto, undoubtedly to regain power once again. DINNER WITH THE PRESIDENT stops short of the inevitable and obvious conclusion as recorded by history (Bhutto's assassination last December), and instead concludes by foregrounding the perspectives of Pakistan's dispossessed.
The second, Canadian documentarian Yung Chang's UP THE YANGTZE, was produced through the National Film Board of Canada, and made waves when it was sold to New York-based Zeitgeist Films just days before its Sundance debut. Taking as its starting point the massive Three Gorges Dam Project on the Yangtze River, UP THE YANGTZE regards the creation of the dam as a foregone conclusion; instead, this observant and meditative work focusses on the impact of the project on just some of the over one million Chinese whose lives are adversely impacted by the disappearance of their homes in the face of the rising river waters. Director Chang tells the story through the eyes of two young adults: Yu Shi, a teenager compelled to defer her dreams of higher education and work for a riverboat tour company to help support her family, and Chen Bo Yu, a coworker who merely sees his job as an opportunity to make money. Yu Shi, an inexperienced but willing novice in the ways of customer service, slowly gets the hang of her job duties, which consists of waiting on tour groups and cleaning up after them. Chen Bo Yu, meanwhile, is seemingly the ideal hire -- handsome, self-assured and possessing of decent English language skills, he is best equipped to interact with foreign tourists. However, his callow personality gets him into hot water with management. The contrasting fates of this pair echoes that of the many families forced to relocate as the waters of the Yangtze rises and slowly but surely obliterates homes, villages, a way of life.
Jennifer Phang's stylish science fiction narrative HALF-LIFE was deemed fitting of placement within Sundance's New Frontiers section, which seemingly served to further marginalize APA cinema this year away from "showcase" exposure. Too bad: Phang's story, about a young boy who discovers that he has "special abilities" even as his fatherless family is threatened by the untowardness of his mother's live-in boyfriend, is at turns meditative, creepy, and eeirily prophetic. Though it enjoyed a positive reation in Park City, HALF-LIFE would have benefitted even further from the added exposure of being placed in a competitive category. But then, that's just my opinion.
Maybe I've being a bit too dogmatic about it, but in reconsidering the somewhat slim line-up of APA Sundance films, I'm left wondering -- in a "political" year in America, did the selections in this year's Sundance skew away from the overtly political? Or were they political enough? I hate to think that a short animated film like BECAUSE WASHINGTON IS HOLLYWOOD FOR UGLY PEOPLE was the standard bearer for politically active and activist filmmaking among Asian Pacific Americans at Park City in 2008. Maybe it was a case of bitter medicine, taken in small doses, going down easier than the messages of prominently-programmed features. I'll leave it at that for now.
Some programming notes: As mentioned previously, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival is fortunate to present UP THE YANGTZE at this year's event, and we are excited to welcome director Yung Chang to introduce the film on Saturday, May 3 at 2:30 p.m. at the Laemmle's Sunset 5. Julia Kwan's SMILE, selected as a 2008 Festival Golden Reel Nominee, will screen on Sunday, May 4, 2:30 p.m. at the DGA.
