SDAFF DAY 2: NO STRINGS ATTACHED?

Film has a unique way of bringing life’s perspectives into an edible manner with the added beauty that within ourselves we can be inspired to think, feel and in some cases do something about it. The films I saw last night (Oct. 12th) came with a yin-yang of emotion, a glorious balance of strings and no strings attached.

The difficulty of blogging for a such a cool film festival is that there are so many great movies being showed at the same time, that I would need to be a physically and mentally endowed octopus with the ability to tear myself apart and be in eight places at the same time. I was assuming that I could easily float between films, 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, detach and make myself come across like an expert.

WRONG.

After spending three hours at SDSU, where the cast and crew of FINISHING THE GAME were doing a Q&A to a packed house at Montezuma Hall, I sat down with Dustin Nguyen, Roger Tam and Justin Lin for some truly heart-to-hearts about their film. I wont ramble on about that but something happened that was really touching.

I interviewed Justin 11 years ago at a coffee shop in LA, with his life-long pal Quentin Lee, after they had just completed a “lower budget than BETTER LUCK TOMORROW” film, SHOPPING FOR FANGS. We spoke for about three hours and I was the only media man that wrote a 5000-word article on the film and gave them the time of day. I was of course delighted that Justin remembered the interview, recognized me and to this day appreciated the article.

This says a lot about Justin Lin, the man, the director. It is no wonder that actors of stature want to work with him for peanuts, so to speak.

Anyway, after these interviews went way beyond their call of duty, and time was tight, I cautiously zipped back to the festival (I am still new to San Diego, hate to miss an exit and have an old car that takes 20 seconds to go from 0-60 mph) and flew into the theater that I thought AND THEREAFTER II was playing.

WRONG.

In this instance, I realized that sometimes two wrongs do make a right.

NEW YEAR BABY, something that I was not planning to see, hit me like a ton of bricks. As a kid growing up in England, my parents tried to shelter me from the ills of World War II. My parents never spoke about the war, the constant German bombings razing the cities they lived in, all their friends mutilated by the damage, all my uncles and cousins that I would never know or meet because they died while defending the realm.

Even when I asked, nothing was said. There is still so much I do not know. I heard rumors that my dad fought in Burma during the war then got back to England, the only proof hinted to me was a strange Burmese knife that my dad wrestled away from a Japanese soldier; the knife ended up hanging on our living room wall.

We immigrated to America and the only emotion I saw from my dad was in his waning years when he would watch documentaries about WWII and sit there silently weeping. He would never speak about it.

As I was watching NEW YEAR BABY, a documentary about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and director Socheata Pouev’s journey to uncover her family’s long-hidden past in Cambodia, I wished I could have somehow confronted my parents on their past before they died.

So much mystery, so much left unsaid. I can imagine how good for the soul it must have been for Socheata to unlock from her mum and dad, the deep seeded emotions that her parents suffered while living under Pol Pot’s regime, working in labor camps and somehow surviving the Killing Fields.

Although this is an Asian film, about an Asian subject, we are all one under the pain of war, attached together by the same piece of string, and I thank the powers that be, to allow me to cover this festival and see it as plane as day.

OKAY…FLIP FLOP

Now talk about no strings attached, during the SDAFF staff pre-festival meeting, one of the big things I kept hearing about was this dude named C. Diddy (aka David Jung) and his exploits as an air guitarist in AIR GUITAR NATION. I obviously had to check this film out.

I could not stop laughing. Again, it was that old English background in me shining through, because the whole concept and even the movie just came across to me like it was one big MONTY PYTHON sketch.

Although, these air guitarists do take what they do seriously, it just seemed as if each time they spoke about their art, for example, how one guy won a contest because he faked throwing his air guitar into the air, then caught it and continued to play, memories of Monty Python sketches that began with the slogan, “And now for something completely different,” rang in my hand.

I have to admit though, C. Diddy was freaking awesome and was hilariously amazing to watch perform.

After the film, the moppy haired throwback ran down the aisles to the cheering admirers and announced that after his scheduled performance later on at the nightclub, he would be retiring. The sad part is that most of the audience is not old enough to get into the nightclub where he was giving his farewell performance.

Although he air-strummed and air-picked along this wild and wooly ride to the Air Guitar International Championships in Finland, in 2003 and gained a cult following, it was apparent to all of us during Jung’s interview after the film that he has not forgotten his roots. Jung comes across more American that most Americans but has not lost sight of his Korean heritage.

Apparently the film was supposed to be about another air guitarist but Jung stole the show.

Jung shares, “The poster of the film featured Bjorn (the air guitarist Jung soundly beat three times throughout the film), because the studio felt that having an Asian on the poster was not the right demographic they were shooting for; they were being racist.

“It wasn’t supposed to be an Asian America film, but it became one,” he sheepishly adds, “So after they pulled the poster stunt and told me their reasons, I pulled out of the marketing and didn’t push the film for them.

“Hey man, it was not about the money, it was for the passion.”

Most filmmakers and actors will totally agree with Jung. Getting into the entertainment industry for the money is the wrong reason. One must first have passion and from the looks of the SDAFF, there is a lot of that going around.