Variety, Excellence in Asian Festival

Visual Communications and the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, now in its seventh year, offers more diversity and excellence than ever before, emerging as the premier West Coast showcase of its kind.

From Thursday through May 17 there will be events at the Japan America Theater in Little Tokyo, the Laemmle’s Sheraton Grande and LACE in addition to UCLA’s Melnitz Theater.

The opening night attraction Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Japan America Theater is Steven Okazaki’s “Troubled Paradise,” an incisive and illuminating documentary on the efforts of native Hawaiians to reclaim and preserve their heritage. This includes their attempts to halt further development of Hawaii, and in particular to prevent the Pele volcano from being tapped for geothermal energy both on religious grounds and because it would mean the destruction of a unique rain forest.

Okazaki, an Oscar-winning documentarian with many distinguished credits, gathers depressing statistics to reveal how disenfranchised native Hawaiians are on their own ancestral land, yet he also introduces us to an array of vibrant, articulate individuals determined to better the lives of their people.

Rokuro Mochizuki’s “Skinless Night” (Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at Melnitz) and Ang Lee’s “Pushing Hands” (Sunday at 9:30 p.m. at Melnitz) are both works of serious filmmakers who seem to be involved in the same dogged process of self-discovery as their protagonists. This means that patience is required on the part of audiences, who in turn will be rewarded with movies that actually get somewhere and deal with believably real people caught up in everyday life.

A far more sophisticated stylist than Lee, Mochizuki tells a highly autobiographical tale of a young Tokyo filmmaker who struggles to bring some meaning to the porn film genre in which he is toiling. This is a leisurely, detached, stylish and deeply reflective film, a study of an artist coping with increasing dissatisfaction in his work and in his personal life. (Be warned: although the film is not itself pornographic, there is considerable blunt language in the English subtitles.)

In “Pushing Hands,” a 70-year-old tai chi master (Sihung Lung), who has survived the Cultural Revolution, which cost the life of his wife, comes to America from Beijing to live in retirement with his son (Bo Z. Wang) only to find there really is no place for him in his son’s home, especially since there’s no way for him to communicate with the son’s Caucasian wife (Deb Snyder). The film is as conventional in style as a TV movie, but it deals poignantly with the barriers of language and culture and with themes of self-reliance and independence. Indeed, its perspective on American self-absorption and materialism is stingingly accurate.

The late Lino Brocka’s final film, “Dirty Affair” (Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at the Grande) was not available for preview but is certainly a key offering since the courageous and controversial Brocka was indisputably the Philippines’ leading director. Another entry from the Philippines proves to be a delight: Manny Reyes’ amusing yet pertinent “Dreaming Filipinos” (Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Grande), which injects some welcome humor and high spirits in a festival that is always primarily somber in tone. Reyes’ bright, likable college student hero (Adrian Ramirez) won’t be able to graduate from college unless he’s able to answer to his professor’s satisfaction the question, “What’s wrong with the Filipinos?” The film’s reply, in the form of a zesty satire of the Filipino passion for American culture, is a lingering colonial mentality.

Wang Jin’s “The Girls to Be Married” (Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at the Grande) hasn’t the superb visual sophistication of Zhang Yimou’s “Raise the Red Lanterns” but similarly reveals the horrendous status of women in pre-revolutionary China. Beautifully acted and well-told, it makes its heartbreaking point with complete conviction. That’s the conclusion reached by five adolescents coming of age in a remote Hunan province, probably in the 1920s; but will they really kill themselves?

There are many other offerings, some highly regarded, such as Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day” (Saturday at 6 p.m. at Melnitz). For more information: (213) 680-4462 or (310) 206-FILM, 206-8013.