May 03, 2011

Silk Screen 2011, Asian American Film Festival Pittsburgh

Silk Screen is Asian American Film Festival held in May annually in Pittsburgh Area since 2006. Silk Screen hopes to become one the best festivals of its kind in the world, putting Pittsburgh on the world cultural map for Asian Culture, particularly Asian Films.

This year, the festival is held from May 6 to May 26. Locations vary. 23 Movies from Asian country will be screened. I enjoyed 2009 and 2010 festivals. It's really a good chance to meet Asian movies and cultures.

Check full schedule, ticket information, and theaters.

 After Shock  

Regent Square Theater: May 12 @ 7:00PM & May 14 @ 1:30PM
2010/China/Director: Xiaogang Feng/135 min.
Cast: Jingchu Zhang, Daoming Chen, Yi Lu, Chen Li (Language: Mandarin)
Festivals and Awards: Asia Pacific Screen Award (Best Performance by an Actor & Best Film)
China’s 2011 entry for the Academy Awards, Aftershock, is a emblematic recreation of the disaster that killed over 240,000 in China. In the wake of the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, a young mother, Li Yuanni, is faced with the gravest decision imaginable. Her 7-year-old twins are buried beneath the rubble and only one can be saved. The symbolic reverberations of the tragedy are enduring and continue long after the happening for Li when she discovers the true outcome of her daughter’s fate.


 ASHES 

Regent Square Theater: May 11 @ 9:00PM & May 14 @ 4:30PM
2010/India & USA/Director: Ajay Naidu/77 min
Cast: Firdous Bamji, Heather Burns, Maurice Carr, Samrat Chakrabarti (Language: English)
In Ajay Naidu’s directorial debut, he tells the story of Ashes, a young Indo-American living in New York. WIth monetary pressures to take care of his mentally ill brother, Ashes gets involved with a small gang to pursue an easy path to wealth. As his brother’s condition steadily worsens, Ashes approaches a life of hardcore crime. Which path should Ashes take? A story of Indian values.


 BAMBARA WALALLA 

Harris Theater: May 7 @ 2:00 PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 14 @ 9:30PM
2009/Sri Lanka/Director: Athula Liyanage/108 min.
Cast: Damitha Abeyratne, Neeta Fernando, Athula Liyanage, Mahendra Perera
Language: Shanghainese/ Sinhala
Festivals and Awards: Special Jury’s REMI Awards for Best Cinematography, and Best Direction
A tragic rendering of irreconcilable wrongs, Bambara Walalla follows newly freed Podi Eka, released after 17 years in prison, on his journey to regain a semblance of normalcy and meaning in his tattered reality. Hindered by his lack of education, Podi struggles alone until meeting Mal, a coffin maker with similar problems and vigor for life. In this new companionship Podi embarks on a journey to find love and learn the significance of courage and responsibility as he picks up the pieces.


 DEAR DOCTOR 

Harris Theater: May 7 @ 7:00PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 15 @ 2:00PM
2009/Japan/Director: Miwa Nishikawa/127 min
Cast: Tsurube Shofukutei, Eita, Teruyuki Kagawa, Haruka Igawa (Language: Japanese)
Festivals and Awards: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor; Award of the Japanese Academy; Best Film, Kinema Junpo Academy; Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Actor; Yokohama Film Festival.
Medical student Keisuke Soma arrives to complete his internship in a deceptively quaint, picturesque village where nothing and no one is as simple as one would assume. As Soma learns his way around the village and acquaints himself with the village’s beloved doctor, secrets are revealed, characters are re-examined, and the truth is far more complicated and ambiguous than would seem to befit the idyllic setting.


 DO DOONI CHARR 

Melwood Screening Room: May 9 @ 8:30PM & May 14 @ 1:30PM
2010/India/Director: Habib Faisal/120 min
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh, Archit Krishna, Aditi Vasudev, Akhilendra Mishra
Legendary screen team of Rishi Kapoor and Neetu Singh return in this delightful slice of life tale of family life. The Duggals are an eccentric and loving, but economically challenged, middle class Dehli family. Father Santosh, (Kapoor) manages to provide a comfortable life for his family on his paltry schoolteacher salary. Long resigned to live simply, the Duggals are at once presented with material possibilities and temptations never before imagined. Do Dooni Chaar, often hilarious and always heartwarming, is a gentle satire of consumerism and materialistic values that pervade much of modern India today.


 DOG SWEAT 

Regent Square Theater: May 7 @ 3:00 PM & May 13 9:30PM
2010/Iran/Director: Hossein Keshavarz/90 min.
Cast: Ahmad Akbarzadeh, Tahereh Esfahani, Bagher Forohar, Shahrokh Taslimi
Language: Persian, English Subtitles
Nominated for Independent Spirit Award (Somone to Watch Award)
Hossein Keshavarz’s, Dog Sweat gives us a glimpse of six characters who struggle to find their place in contemporary Iranian society. Throughout the film, the characters have direct encounters with tragedy, sexual frustrations, discrimination, and more as they attempt to balance their personal lives with the social norms of the Western Culture. Dog Sweat has a unique and natural style as it follows six unconnected characters who are really not so different.


 DOOMAN RIVER 

Harris Theater: May 8 @ 3:00PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 11 @ 7:00PM
2010/China/Director: Lu Zhang/90 min.
Cast: Jian Cui, Lan Yin, Jin-Long Lin, Xuansheng Jin (Language: Korean)
Festivals and Awards: Crystal Bear - Special Mention (Best Film)
Through the eyes of 12-year-old Chang-ho, we see the culmination of political unrest along the icy river that separates China and North Korea. Chang-ho’s friendship with Korean escapee, Li Jinglin develops over the boys’ shared love of soccer and sheds light on the dark tension brewing between famine-stricken refugees and the receiving border village.
“Dooman River is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2011 film series. For more information, visit www.globalfilm.org.”


 I AM - OPENING NIGHT SELECTION 

Harris Theater: May 6th @ 7:00PM OPENING NIGHT FILM
2010/India/Director: Onir/95 minutes
Cast: Juhi Chawla, Manisha Koirala, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Sanjay Suri, Purab Kohli
Language: English and Hindi with subtitles
Festivals and Awards: Silver Lion (Best Director), UNICEF Award. Official Selection/Opening Film:
Winner of I-VIEW 2010s Engendered Award for Outstanding Contribution. Official Selection: Vancouver
International Film Festival (Canadian Premier) Oct. 2010
[Film Contains Sexual Content]
“I Am” is about people with fractured lives held together by unbroken dreams. Indian auteur, Onir, once again shatters clichés and pushes boundaries in I Am. I Am’s narrative is multilayered and visually arresting. I Am is a meditation on darker often unexplored themes in Indian society: child abuse, criminalization of homosexuality, single motherhood and the ever looming issue in the Kashmir.


 ITI MRINALINI 

Melwood Screening Room: May 12 8:00PM & May 15 4:30PM
2010/India/Director: Aparna Sen/128 minutes
Cast: Konkona Sen Sharma, Aparna Sen, Rajat Kapoor, Priyanshu Chatterjee
Language: Bengali
Festivals and Awards: U.S. premiere at 9th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
Aparna Sen directs and stars in Iti Mrinalini, a powerful portrait of an aging actress on the brink of suicide. In a last ditch effort to prevent the press from exploiting her personal life, Mrinalini attempts to destroy all of her possessions, churning up forgotten memories in the process. Loosely based on the occurrences of Sen’s own life as an actress, we see Mrinalini’s rise to stardom, intimate trials, and public struggles within the Bengali film industry in the 70s.


 LIVING IN SEDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES 

Regent Square: May 9 @ 9:00PM & May 14 @ 9:00PM
2011/USA/Director: Ian Gamazon/72 min.
Cast: Long Nguyen, Quynn Ton (Language: Vietnamese)
[Film Contains Violent Content]
A dark reverie of vengeance and terror, Ian Gamazon’s “Living in Seduced Circumstances” is an eerie thriller with an unlikely villain. Mr. Thanh (Long Nguyen) finds himself gagged, bloodied, and bound to a wheelchair by 8-months-pregnant Mihn (Quynn Ton). Through playful manipulation of time and dreamlike photography we see that Mihn’s torturous acts are not product of a homicidal psychosis, rather a calculated revenge.


 SAIGON ELECTRIC 

Melwood Screening Room: May 9 @ 6:00PM & May 13 @ 8:30PM
2011/Vietnam/Director: Stephane Gauger/106 min.
Cast: Van Trang, Quynh Hoa, Khoung Ngoc, Elly Nguyen
Language: Vietnamese, English Subtitles
Focusing on the struggles of young adults in modern Vietnam, Saigon Electric tells the story of Mai, a ribbon dancer from the countryside who moves to Saigon in hopes of attending a prestigious dance academy. However, when she doesn’t get in, she befriends Kim, a local hip-hop dancer with the Saigon Fresh crew. Mai soon gets involved with the crew as they prepare for the largest hip-hop competition in South Korea to battle the North Killaz. However, the North Killaz aren’t the only thing standing in Saigon Fresh’s way.


 SF STORIES 

Regent Square Theater: May 8 @ 4:30 PM, May 11 @ 6:30PM & May 14 6:30PM
2010/USA/Director: Raul Jocson/112 min
Cast: Michael Cheng, Tiffany Yoshida, Michael Xiang, Josh Pollock (Language: English)
Festivals and Awards: Winner Best Screenplay LA Asian Pacific Film Festival 2010; Winner Best Narrative Feature Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival 2010
No matter the city and no matter size, strange and separate lives meet and intersect in inexplicable ways. While there is the potential for love, fate can only do so much. Pittsburgh native Raul Jocson makes his impressive directorial debut with nine intricately interwoven tales, ripe with humor and intelligence as he takes us on a ride through the hills of a local’s melancholic San Francisco and into the fated love story of Michael and Wendy. Brought together by fortune, their own separate neuroses continually threaten to break them apart.


 THE BREAK-UP CLUB 

Melwood Screening Room: May 8 @ 4:30PM, May 14 @ 4:00PM
2010/Hong Kong/Director: Barbara Wong Chun-Chun/115 min
Cast: Jaycee Chan, Fiona Sit (Language: Cantonese)
After meeting with a documentary filmmaker, Joe is given a camera to capture the existence of, “The Break Up Club,” a website that promises to reunite him with his girlfriend…as long as he breaks up the relationship of someone close to him. Blurring the line between fantasy and reality, Joe’s story brings him face to face with the pains, complexities and insatiable energy that come with being madly in love for the first time.


 THE KNOT 

Regent Square Theater: May 7 @ 7:30PM & May 15 @ 3:30PM
2010/Japan/Director: Yuichi Onuma/91 min
Cast: Muck Akazawa, Junichi Kawamoto, So Hirosawa (Language: Japanese)
[Film Contains Sexual Content]
Fiery and intrepid, Yoichi Onuma’s “The Knot” is a chronicle of first love reconnected through forbidden circumstances. Newlywed Ayako slips into married life with quiet resilience, suppressing her longing for the explicit ventures of her youth. After returning to her husband’s hometown to take care of her ailing father-in-law, a chance meeting with a man of her past forces Ayako to confront her choices and question her faithfulness in this bittersweet love story.


 THE LIGHT THIEF 

Harris Theater: May 8 @ 7:30PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 12 @ 6:00PM
2010/Kyrgyzstan/ Director: Aktan Arym Kubat/80 min
Cast: Aktan Arym Kubat, Taalaikan Abazova, Askat Sulaimanov, Asan Amanov
Language: Kyrgyz
Festivals and Awards: Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2010 & Locarno International Film Festival 2010
Little-known Kyrgyzstan is at the forefront of this beautiful and poetic story of an electrician in a remote, impoverished village in the Kyrgyz Mountains. The flame that lights the homes and souls of his small home, Mr. Light brings warmth and clarity to the lives of the villagers. But, when corruption comes knocking, progress may come at the cost of centuries of tradition.
“The Light Thief is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2011 film series. For more information, visit www.globalfilm.org.”


 THE PIANO IN FACTORY 

Harris Theater: May 8 @ 5:00PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 13 @ 6:00PM
2010/China/Directors: Zhang Meng & Jae-young Kwak/105 min.
Cast: Wang Qian-Yuan, Hailu Qin (Language: Mandarin)
Festivals and Awards: Winner – Best Actor Award Tokyo Int’l Film Festival Official Selection – Toronto Int’l Film Festival, Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival, Cinemanila Int’l Film Festival.
An endearing ballad of devotion, “The Piano in a Factory” captures the moment that Chen (Wang Qian-yuan) finds that his estranged wife has returned after several years to take custody of their daughter. With the decision in his daughter’s hands, Chen begins a desperate and cunning scramble to provide her only wish -- a piano.


 THE TIGER FACTORY 

Regent Square Theater: May 7 @ 1:00PM & May 13 @ 2:30PM
2010/Japan & Malaysia/Director: Woo Ming Jin/84 min
Cast: Fooi Mun Lai, Pearlly Chua, Susan Lee, Rum Nun Chung (Language: Malay)
Festivals and Awards: Cannes Director’s Fortnight Section 2010
[Film Contains Sexual Content]
19-year-old Ping Ping is searching for an escape from her life in Malaysia and the control of her aunt and guardian, Madame Tien. Under the insistence of her aunt, Ping Ping works two exhausting jobs at a pig farm and in the kitchen of a restaurant, and is involved in Madame Tien’s baby racket. She endures the conditions of the racket that pairs immigrant workers with young girls, until a shocking truth about her aunt is revealed.


 THE WHITE MEADOWS 

Harris Theater: May 7 @ 5:00PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 11 @ 9:00PM
2009/Iran/Director: Mohammad Rasoulof/92 minutes
Cast: Hassan Pourshirazi, Younes Ghazali, Mohammad Rabbani, Mohammad Shirvani (Language: Farsi)
Festivals and Awards: Winner of 2009 Asia Africa Special Jury Prize and Muhr Asia Africa Award for Best Actor-Dubai International Film Festival/Nominated for Golden Shell Award-San Sebastian International Film Festival.
Rahmat is tasked with collecting the abundant tears of the islanders in Iran’s great saltwater Lake Urmia. Rahmat’s tale is part mythic and part parable for an ancient land whose sorrows are all too apparent and whose dreams and beauty drown within them. The White Meadows visual metaphors evoke themes of social control and the role of the outcast in a society. Stark, mesmerizing, and entrancing, Rasoulof’s fable works best as an eerie poetic feast for the eye.
“The White Meadows is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2011 film series. For more information, visit www.globalfilm.org.”


 THREE VEILS 

Regent Square Theater: May 7 @ 5:00PM, May 10 @ 9:30PM & May 13 @ 7:00PM
2010/USA/Director: Rolla Sebak/100 minutes
Cast: Sheetal Sheth, Angela Zahra and Mercedes Masöhn
Language: English and occasional Arabic with English subtitles
[Film Contains Sexual & Violent Content]
Rolla Sebak’s memorable and taboo shattering Three Veils recounts the distinct lives of three young American women of Middle Eastern descent as they struggle with identity, faith, and sexuality. Far from monolithic, each of their struggles is unique, yet brilliantly woven together in a tapestry of first generation immigrant experiences. Sebak’s gentle unveiling of the women’s connections leaves the viewer breathless.


 UDAAN 

Regent Square Theater: May 10 @ 6:00PM
Melwood Screening Room: May 14 @ 6:30PM
2010/India/Director: Vikramaditya Motwane/134 min
Cast: Ronit Roy, Ram Kapoor, Rajat Barmecha, Manjot Singh
Language: Hindi
Festivals and Awards: Cannes Un Certain Regard Nominee 2010
Borrowing a slice from everyone’s life, Udaan makes them into a first-hand account of a troubled teen facing a tyrant father, a step brother he never knew existed and the journey to free himself from a world that’s slowly suffocating him. Described as poignant, unsettling and disturbing, it is a brilliant take of an adolescent defying expectations and seeking out the passionate gems of life that are too often abandoned.


 WEDDING PLACE 

Regent Square Theater: May 8 @ 2:00PM, May 9 @ 7:00PM & May 13 @ 4:30PM
2010/USA & Korea/Director: Christine Yoo/93 Minutes
Cast: Brian Tee, Kang Hye-jung, Margaret Cho, Bobby Lee, Stephen Park
Language: English
Get married or die. Either way, there isn’t much time left for Jason Kim. The 29-year old advertising executive is struggling to overcome the terrible fate of an ancient family curse that threatens his very life if he is not married by his 30th birthday. A feel-good romantic comedy, it all takes off when the picture perfect girl, Jinnie Park, abandons Jason at the altar of the Wedding Palace.


 WOMEN WITHOUT MEN 

Melwood Screening Room: May 8 @ 2:30PM
Andy Warhol Museum: May 15 @ 7:00PM
Cast: Pegah Ferydoni, Arita Shahrzad, Shabnam Tolouei, Orsi Toth, Navid Akhavan, Bijan Daneshmand
Language: Farsi with English subtitles
Festivals and Awards: Winner, Silver Lion: Venice Film Festival
[Film Contains Sexual Content]
In the summer of 1953, the United States and Britain sponsored a coup of democratically elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh. At this turbulent moment in history, we meet four Persian women. Each of them is a distinct representation of the prescribed roles of women in Iran. Their lives and stories are interwoven as they seek freedom and solitude. Renowned visual artist, Shirin Neshat, presents a visual feast and an emotional wallop from the very first sequence.


 ZERO BRIDGE 

Regent Square Theater: May 8 @ 12:00PM, May 15 @ 1:00PM
2008/India & US/Director: Tariq Tapa/96 min
Cast: Mohamad Imran Tapa, Taniya Khan, Ali Mohommad Dar (Language: Urdu, subtitles in English)
Festivals and Awards: Best Film: Leeds International Film Festival and Hidden Gems Film Festival, Audience Award: Mumbai International Film Festival
Tariq Tapa’s, “Zero Bridge” is a hopeful portrayal of Diliwar, a 17-year-old masonry apprentice turned pick-pocket, anxious to leave his double life in Srinagar City, Kashmir. A chance encounter with one of his victims produces an unlikely friendship, but Diliwar’s crimes soon put both of their futures on the line.