New York Asian Film Festival 2009

June 19 – July 5, 2009

from June 19 to July 2 at the IFC Center
(323 Sixth Avenue, at West 4th Street)

and

from July 1 – 5 at Japan Society
(333 East 47th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues)


Look out! It's the first half of the line-up for the New York Asian Film
Festival 2009. We've still got between 10 and 20 more movies to announce,
lots (we mean LOTS) of special guests and some movies that are going to blow
your mind to come. But for now, here're the first 19 films in this year's
line-up.

Keep your eyes on www.subwaycinema.com for full details. Press enquiries can
respond to this email address.

THE EQUATION OF LOVE AND DEATH (China, 2008, Cao Baoping) – a twisty Chinese
thriller anchored by an award-winning performance from Zhou Xun as a
chain-smoking, obsessive-compulsive cab driver desperate to find her missing
boyfriend.

OLD FISH (China, 2007, Gao Qunshu) – call this one an anti-thriller. A
long-in-the-tooth member of Harbin's bomb squad takes on a mad bomber who's
leaving diabolical homemade explosives all over the city. Written and acted
mostly by actual cops and bomb squad officers, the movie belongs to real
life ex-cop and non-actor Ma Guowei, who plays the titular old fish in this
gripping, ultra-realistic look at China's bomb disposal procedures, which
apparently include putting a ticking explosive device in your bicycle basket
and pedaling like hell for the river.

IF YOU ARE THE ONE (China, 2008, Feng Xiaogang) – it shouldn't work, but it
does. This is the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies: a gorgeous,
heartfelt, sharply-written romance between Shu Qi and Ge You, directed by
China's master of the blockbuster, Feng Xiaogang (ASSEMBLY). The
second-highest grossing movie EVER released in China, it's like something
from MGM in the 1930's, a throwback to a time when romances made you wish
you could get up out of your seat and walk through the screen and into a
better, funnier and far more romantic world.

THE FORBIDDEN DOOR (Indonesia, 2009, Joko Anwar) – the director of last
year's festival favorite, KALA, is back and boy is this one twisted. Like a
19th century gothic novel adapted by Alfred Hitchcock and directed by David
Lynch, this movie about a sculptor and the horrible things he does to become
successful is one of the sickest, kinkiest movies we've ever screened.
Graceful, gliding and with a Bernard Herrmann-esque score we feel confident
when we say you've never seen evil look quite so beguiling.

20TH CENTURY BOYS (Japan, 2008, Yukihiko Tsutsumi)
20TH CENTURY BOYS: CHAPTER TWO - THE LAST HOPE (Japan, 2009, Yukihiko
Tsutsumi) – as revered as the DEATH NOTE series, 20TH CENTURY BOYS (named
after the T. Rex song) is an epic manga story that has finally become three
much-anticipated movies, with the third, concluding installment coming out
in August 2009. When they were kids, a neighborhood gang of buddies wrote an
illustrated “Book of Prophecy” about a group of bad guys who destroyed the
planet with viruses and giant robots. Now they've grown up into hard luck,
broken down adults and the events from their homemade comic book are coming
true and they're the only people who can stop it. This hard-charging
narrative races ahead full speed, packed with destroyed cities, death cults,
funeral banquets, old friends, broken dreams and invincible assassins. The
kind of thing to make you laugh and give you goosebumps all at the same
time, it's a boys' adventure tale for the 21st century.
(The 20th Century Boys manga is currently being released in America by Viz)

ALL AROUND US (Japan, 2008, Ryosuke Hashiguchi) – after a seven-year break,
director Ryosuke Hashiguchi is back and the results are shattering. This
movie observes eight years of a marriage, marking the passage of time with
famous Japanese murder trials covered by the husband who is a courtroom
sketch artist. As his wife wrestles with depression and the two of them try
to hold on to each other the movie becomes scalding water thrown on all of
your emotional weak points. Actress Tae Kimura won “Best Actress” for her
performance as the wife at the Japanese Academy Awards and she deserves it
for her work in this amazing, sensitive film that speaks quietly but will
make everyone in the audience sit up and listen.

CHILDREN OF THE DARK (Japan, 2008, Junji Sakamoto) – a Japanese movie shot
in Thailand about the child trafficking business (both for sex and for
organs) sounds awful, but this movie blew us away with its unblinking,
hard-nosed attitude. Full of more horrible sights per second than any other
movie made this year, and with a minimum of preaching, the awful truth of
this film (which was banned in Thailand) is that all of us are guilty of the
exploitation of children, whether we're the ones actually stealing their
kidneys or not. This is an urgent scream for action, and a movie you'll have
a hard time forgetting.

CLIMBER'S HIGH (Japan, 2008, Masato Harada) - Masato Harada, director of
last year's SHADOW SPIRIT, gets his Howard Hawks on again with this gripping
ensemble drama about a group of newspapermen covering the real-life tragedy
of a 1985 plane crash in the mountains of central Japan. Headlined by
Shinichi Tsutsumi from the ALWAYS movies, who plays a
mountaineer-turned-reporter, the story concentrates less on the disaster and
more on the moral responsibility of the men assigned to tell the story of
the tragedy, and how the event nearly destroyed their lives and
relationships.

THE CLONE RETURNS HOME (Japan, 2008, Kanji Nakajima) – it's been compared to
Tarkovsky's SOLARIS, and they ain't all wrong. Debuting at the Sundance Film
Festival this quietly shimmering science fiction movie starts as hard sci fi
and then morphs into a surreal space opera set on earth. An astronaut dies
in an accident while in orbit, but surprise! The Japanese Space Agency
cloned him before he went up into space and so now his wife gets the clone
as a consolation prize. But life can be hard when you're the clone of a dead
man, and soon this photocopied human is lost in the labyrinth of his own
artificial memories.

K-20: LEGEND OF THE MASK (Japan, 2008, Shimako Sato) In a fictional past
where Japan never participated in World War II and wealthy aristocrats rule
the capital city, a mysterious thief named "K-20" steals from the rich and
has become a folk hero to the poor. A master of disguise, no one has ever
seen K-20's true face, and when a poor circus acrobat (played by the dreamy
Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed as the master criminal, he must seek the help
of a rich princess to clear his name and bring the real K-20 to the
authorities. One of the biggest Japanese productions of recent years, and
featuring special effects by the team behind the ALWAYS movies, K-20 is an
old-school, running-and-jumping, steampunk action adventure in the grand
tradition of silent serials and swashbuckling Errol Flynn movies. And, oddly
enough for a Japanese film, it's got a female director at the helm.

LOVE EXPOSURE (Japan, 2008, Sion Sono) – the director of EXTE and NORIKO'S
DINNER TABLE returns with one of the most amazing cinematic achievements of
the year. A four-hour epic about pornography, Catholicism, families,
fathers, true love, cross-dressing, kung fu, cults and mental illness this
movie has been rejected by every single US distributor, which is their loss.
The redemptive powers of God, sex and true love unite in a holy trinity of
motion picture catharsis that will send you out of the theater cleansed of
sin, and horny as hell. This is your only chance to see it, and if you ever
loved movies you cannot afford to miss it.

MONSTER X STRIKES BACK: ATTACK THE G8 SUMMIT (Japan, 2008, Minoru Kawasaki)
Preceded by - GEHARA: THE LONG-HAIRED GIANT MONSTER (Japan, 2009, Kiyotaka
Taguchi, short film) – preceded by a lovingly made short film about giant
monsters, MONSTER X is from Minoru Kawasaki (CALAMARI WRESTLER and EXECUTIVE
KOALA) and it's a remake/sequel to 1967's THE X FROM OUTER SPACE featuring
the hideous space chicken, Guilala. Here, in a tribute to classic giant
monster films, Kawasaki turns the “stupid” dial up to 11 and loads the film
with old school special effects as Guilala attacks the G-8 summit and the
world's leaders have to kick its kaiju butt. Also featuring: Takeshi Kitano
as “Takemajin” the savior of Japan. Between these two films you'll get more
monster love than you've had all year.

SNAKES AND EARRINGS (Japan, 2008, Yukio Ninagawa) – based on the
best-selling novel about a woman who decides that her goal in life is to
have her tongue split, this is the body modification opus you've been
waiting for. Bored of her daily life, she starts with tattoos, moves on to
piercing, and finally wants the full bifurcated tongue. Yuriko Yoshitaka
gives an incredibly raw, totally exposed performance that's cleaning up the
awards and its the anchor of this sensitive, emotional, erotic, disturing
and beautiful movie for anyone who ever looked at a pierced tongue and
thought, “Well, maybe...”

WHEN THE FULL MOON RISES (Malaysia, 2008, Mamat Khalid) – the best way to
describe this movie is Guy Maddin taking on the history of Malaysian cinema.
Most of the older Malaysian movies have been destroyed by the ravages of
time, so director Mamat Khalid makes a “lost” black-and-white thriller from
the 60's, that's part loving homage and part sharp-eyed send-up. Full of
secret communist cults, werewolves, were-tigers, ghosts, private eyes,
midgets and eerie secrets it's so deadpan you don't know if you should be
laughing or crying. An epic homemade achievement of brain-boiling
strangeness and charm.

BREATHLESS (South Korea, 2009, Lee Hwan & Yang Ik-june) – winner of the top
award at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival this movie is labor of love by
Yang Ik-Joon who wrote, directed and stars. Playing one of the most
unrepentant thugs ever to grace the silver screen, he's a debt collector
who's in it purely for the violence. But when he meets a high school girl
who's as unrelenting and tough as he is he begins to come unraveled and soon
the movie's less about his behavior, than the behavior of men everywhere who
would rather punch a woman in the face than expose their feelings. From its
first shouted obscenity to its last bloody beat-down this is an
uncompromising dissection of male violence that'll leave you bruised and
violated.

DACHIMAWA LEE (South Korea, 2008, Ryu Seung-wan) – Ryu Seung-Wan (CITY OF
VIOLENCE) makes this pitch perfect send-up of Korean spy cinema of the 70's
and 80's that stands alone as a gut-busting comedy, a breathtaking action
flick and a satire of Korea's motion picture past. Korea in the 70's was
turning out cut rate anti-communist and anti-Japanese spy films by the
truckload and they're being rediscovered now with all their glorious wooden
dialogue, ridiculous plots and hard-hitting action. Ryu, Korea's king of
action movies, directs this flick like an unholy blend of Stephen Chow and
Jackie Chan, full of elaborate set pieces and ridiculous contrivances,
sending up Korea's anti-communist hysteria while serving up some ace martial
arts.

DREAM (South Korea, 2008, Kim Ki-duk) – from Korea's number one cinematic
transgressor comes this surreal, dark fantasy about two people who find that
their dreams are connected. Being a Kim Ki-Duk film this leads to all kinds
of emotional outrageousness. Starring Japan's Joe Odagiri and Korea's Lee
Na-Young, it's the best film from director Kim in years, full of
in-your-face physicality and scenes that don't just go over the line but set
the line on fire. Ultimately Kim Ki-Duk is chasing bigger philosophical
fish, however, wondering if dreams are a product of reality or if reality is
a product of our dreams. It's a return to form by a master director.

ROUGH CUT (South Korea, 2008, Jang Hun) – a high concept action comedy given
an intimate, arthouse flavor by the director's intense focus on his two main
characters. A spoiled, pampered and destructive actor known for playing
gangsters winds up starring in his latest movie with a real life gangster,
hired at the last minute. Plenty of fights and action if you're here for
that sort of thing, but of far more interest is the slowly evolving,
ever-unfolding nature of the two lead actors whose journey from star to
wreck and from gangster to diva are chronicled in intense close-up. This is
one of those movies that under-promises and over-delivers.

CAPE NO. 7 (Taiwan, 2008, Wei Te-sheng) – the highest grossing movie ever
released in Taiwan, CAPE NO. 7 is less of a movie than a phenomenon. Things
kick off when a pop star decides to hold a concert in a tiny seaside town
and the civic booster mayor vows to form a local band to be the opening act
as an act of self-promotion. Think of it as THE FULL MONTY only with
Mando-pop instead of stripping and you've got the idea. The director
mortgaged his house and borrowed money from friends to make this film and
it's so carefully observed, seamless and crowd-pleasing that it's amazing
that it's his first film to get a theatrical release.