Cinema Junkie: Celebrating Asian Cinema, Old and New
Bonus Podcast
(this transcription was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies)
JADE HINDMON You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. Pacific Arts Movement will host the 14th edition of their Spring Showcase next week, where you can see the best of Asian cinema. Kpbs cinema junkie, Beth Acomando, sat down with Artistic Director Brian Who, as well as filmmaker Jota Mun, whose new documentary will close the festival. Take a listen.
BETH ACCOMANDO Brian, we are on the Eve of yet another Spring Showcase. This is your 14th, and you have an opening night film, which is a documentary. And although you don't have outright horror films in this event, I would say there's some pretty horrific things that are uncovered in this documentary. So tell us about that.
BRIAN HU I mean, there's nothing more apocalyptic than the state of our environment. Yes. If you're thinking about how it's all going to end, it might be related to that. This is a documentary about a company off of around the San Pedro, Long Beach area that in the 1970s was dumping a bunch of DDT into the water. It was one of those holy crap moments. Somebody just filled this up with industrial waste, kicked it off of a ship, and it's just been sitting here on the sea floor ever since. But decades later, it's definitely there. And so there's a diagram in the film where they have these spots, where hotspots of pollution. And this one right off the Coast of San Diego And so, yeah, so a few years ago, a LA Times journalist named Rosanne Shah did a huge front page story about this. And people didn't realize that the LA Times was actually turning this into a full feature-linked documentary. So she co-directed this film, and she's, I guess in some ways, the hero. Although to me, there are a lot of heroes in this film, particularly the scientists, the researchers, academics who are literally digging what we don't see to find out not just the extent of the pollution, but to what extent can we do something about it right now?
BRIAN HU And we knew we wanted this to be opening night, not only because we feel like everyone should watch this film, but also because a lot of these scientists, these heroes, are based here in San Diego. They drew from research that was done at Scripps and also at San Diego State University. Researchers here who have been dedicating years to doing this research, them and their graduate students.
BETH ACCOMANDO And your festival is book-ended with documentaries, and your closing night has a more positive vibe to it. And this is called Between Goodbyes, which looks at a very interesting take on adoption stories.
BRIAN HU Yeah. I mean, at the Asian Film Festival, we've been showing transnational adoption stories for so long now. I mean, this is one of the... It's like it's one of those stories that always works. When you follow somebody who's been adopted in the United States but came from Korea, from China, in this case from Korea, and she grew up in the Netherlands, not knowing who her birth family is, and then those reunion scenes and getting to know the person you could have been, that never gets old. What makes this one a little bit different, I mean, there's a lot of things that make it different, but one of the issues that's different in this film is that our lead character, Miok, is a lesbian, and her family in Korea, when they reach out to her, they get to know her, find out that their daughter is a lesbian. And what I loved about the film is they don't care. They're so happy to meet their daughter. And maybe it's just decades of guilt, of feeling like, I'm so happy to have my daughter. It doesn't matter. We had no expectations to begin with, and this is the family that we have now.
BRIAN HU And so the film is Miok going to Korea, not only getting to know her parents, but also introducing her parents to her new wife.
BETH ACCOMANDO And a good chunk of this year's festival is taken up by what you're calling, I think it's called Two by Two. And this is pairing up two filmmakers and two trilogies. We're not getting the full trilogies, but these films that look to characters over decades. And these filmmakers are working decades apart. So talk a little bit about this Two by Two program.
BRIAN HU Yes. So this all started when I saw a film last year called Village Rock Stars Two. It's directed by a... I suppose she's not a new director, but Rima Das in India. She's become one of the most exciting new voices in India. Her films are... They're like sweet village stories, but they're also observational. They're packed with story. But in other words, usually, art films don't get sequels. And she did the sequel because, first of all, the first one was such a critical hit in India. But also the first one starred her own cousin. It was made by her family. It was And it's set in the village she grew up in. And she feels committed to that story. And she wanted to come back to that story years later to see her actual cousin years later and how she's grown. And I thought, Wait, does this ever happen? Are there art films including in a place like India, that gets sequels? And when I thought, Well, of course. There is one of the greatest sequels of all time, like you said, the great trilogies of all time. And that's the Apu Trilogy, directed by Satjiyat Ray.
BRIAN HU The first film in that, Pather Panjali, is also about young kids in a village, and the sequel follows their story again years later. And I thought, well, this would be a really fun pairing of pairings. And like you said, not just years apart within each universe, but also years apart in the history of Indian cinema. So you get a sense of how this art cinema in the 1950s that really put Indian cinema on the map. I mean, Satjiyat Ray is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, period, from any place from any decade. And Rima Doss, to me, is one of these really exciting new voices that who knows where, I don't know, 40, 50 years from now, we'll be talking about her. And so I think this is going to be a fun afternoon of surprising and uncanny resonances across the years and across the decades.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I always have to thank you for your festivals because you always manage to program something that is brand new, a discovery to me. So Village Rock stars was something I had never heard of, and I loved that film. But I think possibly topping it was another film called Soulja of Love, which I don't remember seeing a lot of films from Kazakhstan. So how did you come across this film, and was it difficult to get?
BRIAN HU It was a bit of a challenge to get. So it hasn't played very many festivals at all. But then I saw the trailer And like you said, we've played classic films. We had a classic film last year that was a brutal Western. So usually, you think of classic films as either a little bit dreary, a little bit dusty. And this is one that's full of color and movements and action. And it's because it's a full-blown musical. People break out into song and dance in this movie. And so part of the treat is just seeing Kazakhstan like it's an MGM musical. And so that's itself already a shock that is worth the admission already. But then to find out that it's also... First of the music is quite good. It's based on famous rock pop songs from Kazakhstan in the '80s and '90s. The choreography is really... There's some pretty stunning moments of dance in airports and stairwells. It shows a lot of creativity and an artistry. Yeah, so it's a total blast.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, and of course, my favorite part of Spring Showcase, and anytime you do this, is mystery kung fu theater. I'm a little disappointed in San Diego that they don't pack the house for this. But once again, I will try to encourage people to go. And this is an event where you don't tell people what the film is. So explain a little bit about what people can expect from this.
BRIAN HU Yeah, mystery kung fu theater. This is inspired by television days, right? When you just know there's something on kung fu afternoon on TV in a certain channel, and you don't know what they're going to show, and you show up for it, and you have a great time. And so we want to replicate that sense of discovery, but also communal pleasure. To know that there's a bunch of other screaming fans in this audience that they, too, don't need to know what the film is. I will say, usually, there have been years where two days before mystery kung fu theater, I don't know why I'm showing it. This year, I know. I'm quite excited about Can you give us the decade?
BETH ACCOMANDO Or is that too much? Will you have to kill me.
BRIAN HU Yeah, we may not hear from you again.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, I have to say, talking about this communal experience of it, I do remember there was one year where there was a projection issue and you couldn't get sound. But there was enough of an audience there that we all volunteered to pitch in and we made sound effects. People read the subtitles in character voices. And I have to say that was probably my favorite mystery kung fu theater because it was exactly that. It was this communal experience of people who all just love that genre and love that style of filmmaking.
BRIAN HU Well, I'm glad it was your favorite because I was sweating the whole time, wondering what we're going to do about this screening. But yeah, it's really a testament not just to the spectacle of watching a kung fu movie, anything can happen in a kung fu movie, but also the community that comes together. And you're part of it, of course, that is game for anything. It's game for we want this to succeed. We want everybody to have a great time. I'd rather that not happen again.
BETH ACCOMANDO It has never happened anytime else. I will say that. People who have not seen some of these older kung fu movies may not understand the glory of this action and choreography that is just so lightning fast and amazing.
BRIAN HU Yeah. I mean, when you think of what is cinematic, Often we think about beautiful landscapes or something. But to me, cinema is about movement. It's about choreography. It's about design. It's about the body. Where else do you see this all come together with as much force and creativity than in the classic kung fu films? And that's not really to knock the current kung fu films. And there aren't as many as there used to be. But that wave, especially in the '70s and '80s, I don't know if we'll ever see that again. Although, If you have me thinking about how the Oscars have this new category, this new stunt design category. Finally. Finally. But it's really 50 years too late. Could you imagine all of our favorite filmmakers in the '70s if they all had Oscars? And that's even mortality that comes with that.
BETH ACCOMANDO Not even the '70s. I'm going, they should at least dub the Oscar like the Buster for Buster Keek. Oh, I know. Those silent comedians were the ones who were our first stuntmen.
BRIAN HU Or for me, like Yuen Woo Ping, Jackie Chan, Tsang Tsing.
BETH ACCOMANDO Yeah, Those films are amazing. And you also have, I guess you would call it an additional retro screening or a restoration. You have I Am A Ghost, which is HP Mendoza, who is somebody who's shown films at multiple festivals with you. And explain what this is.
BRIAN HU Well, first of all, I Am A Ghost is, for me, one of the great Asian-American horror films.
CLIP Sylvia, help me!
BRIAN HU It's played well beyond the Asian and Asian-American the film circuit. Horror fans know this film. And so HP reached out to me a few months ago saying, Hey, I did a new remastering of the film because the technology has advanced since then. And he's a film nerd, too. He wants his film to be preserved and to be seen specifically in a movie theater. And at first I was like, I don't know if I have a space for something as specific as this. But it turns out that we've been trying to do more at the Digital Jim cinema. I know you do a lot of events there, too. And And we thought this might be the perfect space for I Am A Ghost. It's an intimate space. And that already plays a lot of more indie and cult films. And HP, he's willing to come down, so we're going to do a Q&A with him. And we haven't announced this yet, and you'd probably be excited to hear this, but we're going to use a screening as a way to announce that we're going to be doing more at the Digital Gym year round. That opens up all kinds of possibilities.
BETH ACCOMANDO I am thinking mystery kung fu theater, one Saturday a month.
BRIAN HU I mean, we're going to see how this goes. We've been doing a lot of screenings up in Miriamesa, and that's great because we're able to serve that audience. But there are people further south, in downtown, South County, and the digital gym is a perfect place for them.
BETH ACCOMANDO Well, that's exciting news. And as always, I am looking forward to the Spring Showcase, and thank you for programming wonderful films again. Thank you. And now we're going to hear my interview with Jota Mun, whose film, Between Goodbyes, is the closing night film for Spring Showcase. Give us a little background on the film so people know what it's about. Sure.
JOTA MUN It's about an original mother and a queer adoptee struggling to reconnect and stay in touch and keep their reunion intact over the long haul. And I use the word original mother intentionally. As I've learned from other original mothers in my research for the film, there's a real rejection growing around the term birth mother and how it denotes a almost livestock or breeding connotation. So really trying to move away from that and use more empowering language that to me also feels more accurate in calling people our original families.
BETH ACCOMANDO And a lot of times you see adoption stories from the point of view of the child trying to find the parents. And in this case, it was the parents trying to find the daughter.
JOTA MUN Yeah. As soon as I heard about Ocune's story, I was immediately struck by the fact that her and her husband searched for their daughter for over 10 years. And like you're saying, it's a real inversion of the usual narrative around who searches for who. And while doing research for the film. It was new information to me that so many birth parents do initiate searches, but because they don't have legal rights to do so, there's no statistics available and really very few resources.
CLIP Growing up, I would imagine sometimes I have Korean parents somewhere, but I never thought that we could actually reunite. I stayed wondering.
JOTA MUN You know, for me, growing up as a Korean adoptee, there was no end to the many versions that I imagined of what my original mother or family might be like. And I feel like to this day, there's still a real lack of information available about what they think or feel about their relinquishment of parental rights, how it affects them in the long term, and how they feel about wanting to search for their own children or not. Through making the film, I think I got a really amazing opportunity to meet Ocune over many years, and it really changed what I thought of the whole adoption narrative. I think it's always over-focused on the children, and it never really asks about the families or the parents left behind.
BETH ACCOMANDO How did you go about finding this particular family? How did you come across them in your research?
JOTA MUN Yeah, it actually all began with Mika and I being friends. As you see in the film, I met her in 2016 at a conference for adoptees that's held every three years in Seoul called Ica.
CLIP It was actually nice to be among only Korean adoptees, being with all these people that are never going to be wherever they were adopted to and never going to be really Korean. I was feeling like home.
JOTA MUN And just got to know Mika more, and we thought it would be so wonderful to make something to speak to these other pieces of representation within our community that we felt like, to your point, haven't been out there before. I think there's been a few things on queer adoptees, but that was definitely another piece that we wanted to highlight how coming out across cultures and how that affects wanting to reunite, which I think a lot of types of families can relate to, just how to work through differences.
BETH ACCOMANDO Now, with the documentary, you can't script where the story goes. As you were doing interviews and following these people, what things surprised you or came up that did it change Did anything change the course of the documentary or the way you decided you wanted to tell the story?
JOTA MUN Yeah. I think at first it started as an idea for a short film. To be really scrappy with the budget and the approach, I had a hybrid approach. I used some narrative techniques where you can see there's more planned-out sequences. In the beginning, it was a lot more in that direction with just voiceover. Then as I was extending it into a feature, I was getting all this feedback that it almost felt like they were elusive, like you couldn't quite get closer to them. So all the verite actually came later as a response to that. I think I realized I was being overprotective of the participants because I just felt so tender towards them and not wanting them to be misunderstood. But I think I needed to learn to lean back and trust that I could just show more of their everyday lives and people can make their own assumptions. When I set out to make the film, it was going to be about how difficult it is to stay in reunion. And then through the process of making it and to know this family and really deeply caring about them, I realized that I was going to be heartbroken if it didn't work out for them. I really had to check my own expectations, but it definitely affected the approach that at the end of the day, it felt more important for them to create a solid bond than for this film to be spectacular or something. I think I really pivoted to including the other birth mother, Ruth, who's a therapist, to facilitate their conversations. As you see in one the scenes, I really directly speak to Mika to encourage them to push through the difficult times.
BETH ACCOMANDO You mentioned that you met her at an organization meeting for adoptees. How personal is this documentary for you?
JOTA MUN It feels extremely personal, even though I'm not in it a ton. Just all the identity pieces, and I think the themes of searching for your place in the world, searching for family, and some sense of belonging and home, and also just, I think a million shades of grief are in there, but I hope it's alongside a lot of joy and the way that I think laughter always mixes with crying. So I hope there are also moments of levity in there to take a breath and just that there's room for all of it, the heartbreak and also the beauty of them trying so hard to stay together and their tenacity. Yeah, and it's really just about two incredibly strong women that I think part of their reconciliation is just that they recognize each other as both being these tough survivors.
BETH ACCOMANDO All right. Well, I want to thank you very much for talking about your film.
JOTA MUN Well, thank you so much. It was great to meet you.
JADE HINDMON That was filmmaker Joda Munn and PACart's Artistic Director, Brian Hoo, speaking with Beth Acamando about the PACart Spring Showcase. The mini-festival runs from April 25th through May first at Ultra Star Cinemas in Mission Valley.
