More Than 50 Films on Tap at 10th Asian Pacific Fest

The UCLA Film and Television Archive and Visual Communications’ 10th annual Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, which begins Thursday and runs through June 4, will present more than 50 films at five venues.

The festival opens at the Japan America Theater with Sokly Ny and Spencer Nakasako’s “A.K.A. Don Bonus,” about a Cambodian youth living in a San Francisco housing project.

This event is a benefit for the Los Angeles-based Visual Communications, which marks its 25th anniversary as the nation’s oldest Asian Pacific American media arts center. Over the years, the festival has been first to present the works of China’s fifth-generation filmmakers--among them those of Chen Kaige, director of “Farewell, My Concubine”--and it has also shown Ang Lee’s first feature, “Pushing Hands,” and the student films of Jane Campion.

This year marks the festival’s first artist awards for best short, documentary and narrative film.

“Basically, we want to be as eclectic as possible and don’t want to present just one type of film,” festival programmer Cheng-SimLim said. “We’ve always regarded Asian Pacific filmmakers as part of a Diaspora, so we’ll show films made in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe.

“We do the festival because the opportunities for seeing international cinema in Los Angeles decrease year by year. It may be the only opportunity to see movies not picked up by American distributors. . . . Unfortunately, we have half the funding we had last year, so the festival is about half the size. . . . We never know whether we’ll have enough money for next year’s festival.”

Among the eye-catchers in this year’s festival are “100 Years of Japanese Cinema,” a survey by Nagisa Oshima (“In the Realm of the Senses”); Stanley Kwan’s “Red Rose White Rose,” which stars “The Wedding Banquet’s” Winston Chao and Joan Chen; and Stan Lai’s magical mystery tour of Taipei, “The Red Lotus Society.”

Quentin Tarantino will introduce Wong Kar-Wai’s “Chungking Express,” a romantic comedy-adventure set in Hong Kong; “Rebels of the Neon Gods’ ” Tsai-Ming Liang returns with “Vive l’Amour,” another study of Taipei life, and Garin Nugroho’s “Letter for an Angel” is a rarity for American audiences, a rural epic from Indonesia.

Venues are UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, the Directors Guild, the Pacific Asia Museum, the Japan America Theater and the Sunset 5.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.