Tokyo Jim’s 生活

Last year I had to miss my favorite film festival because I was in Laos at the time, and somehow it didn’t seem worth cutting my trip short just to watch a bunch of movies. I don’t doubt the wisdom of that decision, but I was very happy to be back for the 2010 installment of the San Diego Latino Film Festival.

Over the 11-day festival at the Ultrastar Mission Valley Cinemas, I watched 39 films, in whole or in part (yes, I walked out of a few). Here are my favorites.

El Estudiante (The Student) (México, 2009):
A 70-year-old man goes back to college (I can relate!), but he’s no Rodney Dangerfield, and we learn through him that one should always live life to the fullest. More critical people complain that it simplifies things too much or that it’s anti-abortion and a bit cheesy. But I’m willing to overlook all that for the heartwarming and funny story. It also helps that it takes place in Guanajuato, where I have spent a few hours wandering the university where most of the film takes place. This is the #2 grossing film (and #4 DVD) of all time (of course these stats are never adjusted for inflation) in México, but don’t hold that against it.
Trailer (en español)

Cuestion de Principios (A Matter of Principle) (Argentina, 2009):
A pleasing story about an old stick-in-the-mud (do I detect a pattern here?) who stands up to his boss to show him that not everything in life is for sale, but he goes too far for his own good and seriously tees off his wife.
Trailer (en español)

El Frasco (The Jar) (Argentina, 2009):
A semi-autistic and clumsy intercity bus driver running away from his past and firmly entrenched into his daily routine of driving the same route and stopping for lunch at the same restaurant, almost screws up his one chance at love.
Trailer (en español)

Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Nora’s Will) (México, 2008):
In the ultimate controlling move, an old woman commits suicide on the eve of Passover, but not before preparing the Seder and leaving full preparation instructions with the housekeeper, and inviting her family members to attend. She also arranges for her ex-husband to be the one to discover the death and burden him with arranging the details of her funeral. A definite black comedy.
Trailer (en español)

Io, Don Giovanni (I, Don Giovanni) (Austria/Spain/Italy, 2009):
I’m not a big fan of opera; my mind tends to drift and sleep seems to overcome me. But this film allowed me to finally enjoy the medium. It’s a beautiful retelling of the story behind the opera Don Giovanni. In the course of this, you also get to enjoy much of the opera itself, complete with great scenery and costumes. This is how opera should be consumed!
Trailer (in italiano)
Netflix

La terra degli uomini rossi (BirdWatchers) (Brazil, 2008):
A native tribe, tired of living on the reservation and relying on the local convenience store for their food, decides they are going to move back to their ancestral land. The farmer whose family has been working that land for three generations has other ideas. Nothing is black-and-white.
Trailer
Netflix

Contracorriente (Undertow) (Peru, 2009):
Set in a pretty Peruvian beach town, a married fisherman has an affair with an itinerant (male) painter. After the painter dies, he has an important decision to make. Well done!
Trailer
Netflix

El Regalo de la Pachamama (The Gift of Mother Earth) (Bolivia/Japan, 2008):
This one can be slow at times, especially in the beginning as it chronicles life in the salt flats of Bolivia, but then the real story begins. For the first time, the 13-year-old son accompanies his father on the three-month trek with a caravan of llamas to make the annual delivery of salt to the mountain villages. Here he (and we) experiences life outside his small world and meets people that will change that life.
Trailer (in Quechua with subtitles in 日本語)

Amar (To Love) (México, 2009):
A very funny sexual comedy, but one that’s well crafted with good story lines.
Trailer
Netflix

Os Normais 2 (Brazil, 2009):
A very very silly film about a couple bored with their sexual routine who go out in search of someone to fulfill their fantasy of a ménage a trois. I was laughing so hard throughout the film, and that’s worth a lot sometimes.
Trailer (em Português)

I apologize for the dearth of English-language trailers for these films. I scoured the web looking for them but few were to be found as most of these films do not yet have a US distributor nor are most yet available in the U.S. with English subtitles.

For someone else’s favorites (and it’s someone whose opinion on film I respect), see Phil Luque’s blog post.

Regular readers of this space know that I have trouble resisting a film festival. So I was excited when I was in Busan, Korea looking for my next destination and discovered that the Jeonju International Film Festival was under way and ending in a few days.

Soon I was on a bus to Jeonju, and upon arriving I went straight to the Tourist Information Office outside the bus station (little English spoken, but the representative was quite fluent in Japanese) and picked up the program guide for the festival.

Jeonju Film Festival area

After getting a room for a few days at a local love hotel, I headed into town and started watching movies. I didn’t get to see any from Korea, but my favorite was “Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame” (Iran, 2007) about the situation in Afghanistan told through a 6-year-old girl, who is “kidnapped” by boys playing Taliban & Americans (like we might play Cowboys & Indians).

They try to show all films with both Korean and English subtitles, and since few film prints have both, they have extra small screens at the bottom (for English) and side (for Korean) of the main screen, upon which they project extra subtitles by way of a projector attached to a computer. What an interesting idea!

After the films are done for the day, many gather at a nearby plaza. It was here that I saw an American singer (and English teacher), Seth Martin, playing for a small crowd.

Seth Martin in Jeonju

I hung out listening to his music (it was pretty good) and talking with some of the locals until late in the evening before heading back to my love hotel (alone) to rest up for another full day of movie viewing.

I’m now trying to figure out how I can come up with a good reason to go back next year for the whole festival. They even offer cheap dorm accommodations for visitors. I’m seriously tempted…

Again this year, I attended the 11-day San Diego Latino Film Festival, watched about 35 films, and these are my top-tier picks, meaning I would spend money to buy the DVD so that I can show it to friends and family:

El Brindis (To Life) (Chile, 2007):
A wonderful family story about an 83-year-old who wants to be Bar-Mitzvahed before he dies, and the family reunion that results from this momentous event, including tensions with the half-goy daughter he fathered out of wedlock after his wife died. A real heart-warmer!
Filmmaker’s blog
Trailer

Carandiru (Brasil, 2003, Director: Héctor Babenco):
A prison drama, based on a true story, that takes place in a detention center in São Paulo. Unlike most films of this genre, much time is taken to let us get to know the characters, so they are more than just simple caricatures. Amusingly, this earned it many poor reviews on Amazon.com from those who would have preferred two and a half hours of fighting and shooting. Although clocking in at 147 minutes, I never once felt that the film was dragging.
Trailer

And my runners-up, in no particular order:

Ciudad en Celo (City in Heat) (Argentina, 2006):
A bunch of friends sit around and talk about their lives, with the theme of tango not far in the background. Of course, the various relationships between them and others can get a little complicated.
Trailer

Mariposa Negra (Black Butterfly) (Peru, 2007):
A schoolteacher whose husband, a judge, is ordered assassinated on order of Peru’s security chief, decides to get even. Although a bit unrealistic, it’s still an enjoyable film.
Trailer

El Violin (The Violin) (México, 2006):
Sure, the basic theme (government troops vs. rebels hiding in the bush) is well-worn, but the focus on an old man and his violin gives this one a unique aspect that makes it worth watching.
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

La Zona (México, 2007):
The residents of a fancy gated community take the law into their own hands. Interesting to me mainly for the portrayals of the interactions of the rich with general society, which probably aren’t that far from the truth.
Trailer

Dos Abrazos (Two Embraces) (México, 2007):
Two basically unrelated stories, the first one being a teenage boy with a crush on a supermarket cashier, and the second a taxi driver whose passenger has a stroke in his cab and the hospital makes him take on the responsibilities of a family member. Quite haunting and excellent!
Trailer

Madrigal (Cuba, 2006):
A theater actor goes after a fat girl mainly for her apartment, but also to try and cure his erectile dysfunction. Sometimes you’re not sure what is real and what is imagined.
Trailer

El Pasado (2007, Director: Héctor Babenco)
A man splits with his wife and goes through a series of women, while his ex-wife continues to hound him.
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

As a serious film festival geek, I buy my pass and commit myself to sitting in dark rooms for many days in a row, all in the hope that I’ll come out of the whole experience with one or two films that I consider to be worthy of highly recommending to my friends and the public.

By this measure, the recently completed 2007 edition of the San Diego Asian Film Festival was an amazing success. There were five dramatic features that I thought were great, along with several runners-up and some good documentaries.

Before giving my recommendations, I should point out that I tend to like Indie-type films with good human stories, and I am totally unmoved by car crashes, shootings, and explosions.

So here were my faves:

5 Centimeters Per Second (秒速５センチメートル) (Japan):
Yes, it’s anime. But don’t think of it that way. This feature could just as well have been done live action. It just happens to use animation instead of actors. It follows a young man from middle school to high school to his post-college life, concentrating on his friendship with one girl/woman. The scenes are all completely life-like, and all details (for example, the pipes on the walls or the train stations) are perfectly reproduced.
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

What The Snow Brings (雪に願うこと) (Japan):
This winner of four awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival was shot in Hokkaido in the winter, with both beautiful scenery and the feeling of what it must be like to work outside in such conditions. Add to that a story of two estranged brothers seeing each other for the first time in almost 15 years, and you have a winner. Oh, yes there’s some horse racing going on too, but unlike Seabiscuit, it doesn’t really matter which horse wins.
Trailer

Owl and the Sparrow (Cú và chim se sẻ) (Vietnam):
An orphan who toils away in her uncle’s factory runs away to the big city and is befriended by a flight attendant and a zookeeper and ends up affecting their lives for the better at least as much as they help her.
Trailer

Rainbow Song (虹の女神) (Japan):
No Japanese movie worth its salt lacks a good tragic death of a young woman, and like my favorite of the 2005 festival “Crying Out Love in the Center of the World (世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ)”, the story is told in flashbacks. Japanese movies have a tendency towards melodrama, but in Rainbow Song (as in Crying Out Love…), this is avoided and we are treated to realistic human emotion in such a situation. Bring your tissues.
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

Tie A Yellow Ribbon (USA):
Very indie. Not much dialog. But there doesn’t need to be. A girl who was adopted from Korea as an infant by an American family has issues from her past to deal with.
Trailer

And here are my runners-up. I can recommend all of these too:
Shanghai Kiss:
A Chinese-American goes to China and suddenly feels he belongs for the first time in his life. But is he really more Chinese than American?
Trailer

Great Happiness Space – Tale of an Osaka Love Thief:
We all know about Japan’s hostess bars, but what about bars for women that want to be paid attention to. I’d heard of such places when living in Japan, but I could never find much out about them. This documentary will answer all your questions. Fascinating!
Trailer

Cats of Mirikitani:
I am always moved when one person can really make a difference in someone else’s life. The filmmaker came across this homeless Japanese-American man living on the streets of New York City and selling hand-drawn pictures of cats. By the end of the film, he is truly much better off, and she got a documentary out of it.