Asian Pacific Festival Offers Many Delights

The Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, co-sponsored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Visual Communications, is back for its eighth year, bigger--and judging from advance screenings--better than ever.

Spread over four venues through May 23, it begins Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Japan America Theatre in Little Tokyo with Tiana Thi Thanh Nga’s poignant and revealing “From Hollywood to Hanoi.” It’s a crackerjack documentary about how a beautiful Vietnamese-American actress decides to visit her native country, which she left as a child more than 20 years earlier, in search of her identity--and to film her experiences.

As the daughter of the head of South Vietnam’s foreign ministry (who today lives in middle-class comfort in San Jose and who disapproved of his daughter’s journey), Tiana once received a doll as a present from President John F. Kennedy.

Upon her return, she discovers, among other relatives, an aunt living in such poverty that the woman has never been able to afford postage to send a letter to America. “From Hollywood to Hanoi” is filled with moments that drive home the terrible toll of war yet also abounds with scenes of warmth, humor and hospitality, giving us an idea of what life is like in Vietnam today and leaving us with the feeling that Tiana has experienced a sense of reconciliation and self-discovery.

Screening Friday at 7 p.m. at the Grande, in the Sheraton Grande hotel downtown, is Raymond Red’s “Bayani” (“Patriots” or “Heroes”), a stunningly beautiful and amazingly venturesome historical epic, stylized and elliptical in its depiction of the often uncertain and fearful inner life of a martyred hero (Juan Diaz) of the revolution against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines in the 1890s. “Bayani,” which film historian Tony Rayns has aptly described as a fable, is tremendously demanding, especially for the non-Filipino viewer not versed in native folk heroes, but proclaims Red as a major and distinctive talent.

In contrast to the poetic, near-surreal “Bayani,” both Tony Chan’s “Combination Platter” (UCLA Melnitz Saturday at 7 p.m.) and Harada Masato’s “Painted Desert” (UCLA’s Melnitz Sunday at 7 p.m.) are two appealing American independently made first features. Neither is flawless but both have so much going for them and have been made with such passion and bittersweet humor that they are well-nigh irresistible.

“Combination Platter” charts the struggles of a shy, formal young man from Hong Kong adjusting to living in America (as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant in Queens) and securing that all-important green card. The film’s main focus is the everyday existence at the restaurant not just for our diffident hero, Robert (Jeff Lau), but also for the other waiters and cooks, most of whom are just as vulnerable as he is to a sweep by immigration agents.

Robert tries dating a white American woman (Colleen O’Brien), only to find that while he likes her, he primarily would like to marry her as a way of getting his green card. Chan makes his points about the plight of the illegal alien deftly yet becomes tiresomely heavy-handed in depicting virtually all of the restaurant’s white customers as stereotypical Ugly Americans.

“Combination Platter” is followed at 9:30 p.m. by “Bullet in the Head,” John Woo’s sensational (in all senses of the word) variation on “The Deer Hunter,” which finds three Hong Kong youths caught up in an adventure-odyssey in Vietnam in 1976. The film is told with Woo’s typically compelling operatic violence and sentiment.

“Painted Desert” owes something to all those roadside stop movies from “Petrified Forest” to “Bagdad Cafe,” but cooks up its own distinctive multicultural comedy-drama. A couple of gangsters, led by James Gammon, stop at no-nonsense Nobu McCarthy’s wonderfully seedy joint in an old Mission Revival building, where someone is found mysteriously near death in the desert, recovers and then signs on as a gourmet chef.

The film affords terrific and rare starring roles for veterans McCarthy and Gammon, long stalwarts of local stages, and despite its various improbabilities, probes the lingering painful and complex heritage of World War II.

For full schedule and information: (310) 206-FILM or (213) 680-4462.