All Things South Asian at SFIAAFF

March 13, 2008

But I have to say, I am still pretty disappointed. As I mentioned in my opening post for our SFIAAFF, I am looking for The Great Asian American Film – a film that explores the lives of Asians in America, or Asians who were born in America and the details of their lives.

So, Amal, by Canadian filmmaker Richie Mehta – based on a short story written by his brother about a rickshaw driver with a heart of gold – looks great. In fact, I thought the short film on this topic that played before in SFIAAFF, if I’m not mistaken, was great. And I am totally interested in the way South Asians living in America/the West are telling stories about the subcontinent.

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But I feel like it’s been done and I want the cutting edge shit.

So that brings me to the main feature by a South Asian American in the festival: Kissing Cousins. Let me just say, I was a huge fan of director Amyn Kaderali’s shorts. Take the A Train was one of those shorts that I saw at SFIAAFF that made me really excited about South Asian American film. It was smart, interesting, well-shot and placed South Asians smack in the middle of America and it’s racial issues. His other feature Call Center, was hilarious, taking the piss out of the whole call center thing.

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Let me start out by saying, I think you should go see Kissing Cousins – it’s playing next Wednesday at 9 p.m. at the Kabuki. Whatever it’s worth, the film made me laugh several times and I thought the main character Amir – played by Samrat Chakrabarti – was good. The film follows Amir through his daily work as a “relationship termination specialist” – where he basically goes around L.A. and breaks up with people for a living. The rest of the movie pits Amir against his friends who are becoming increasingly coupled off and giving him a hard time for his inability to settle down, and for having a job that is so evil. Some of the funniest parts of the movie for me were his friends – especially his best friend Charlie (Zack Ward) and his new new age fiancé Tina (Niki McCauley) that he met in Thailand – who exude this gross new-couple, lovey-dovey energy mixed in with a whole bunch of Eastern exotification. So, Amir goes home to his wacky family in Northern California for Thanksgiving where he runs into his hot British cousin Zara (Rebecca Hazelwood). She ends up coming back down to L.A., on a lark she pretends to be his girlfriend to fit in with his coupled-off friends, and as the press kit says: “An undercurrent of sexual tension develops between them as the charade comes dangerously close to going to far. Will his friends find out the truth? Will Amir fall for his own cousin? Or will he become one of his own “victims”?”

Um, yeah. Very strange. A romantic comedy about your cousin? I feel like this whole part of the plot really knocked it off of the normal romantic comedy route, while it didn’t dive far enough into the “dirty secret fantasy of boinking your cousin” to make it an interesting take like Spanking the Monkey. For all the great laughs and awesome appearances by David Allan Grier as Amir’s neighbor, and Jaleel White – better known as Steve Erkel – as his pregnant sister’s military obsessed boyfriend, and even the dad played by Gary Bednob – who got famous as Mooj – the foul-mouthed old Pakistani man in The 40 Year Old Virgin – I feel like this was just a bit of a misfire. So, sadly, Kissing Cousins is just not The Great Asian American Film I was looking for.

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Sylvie already talked about the (sold-out) Pretty to Think So directed by Francis Hsueh and Steven Hahn here, but I was fascinated by the mix of characters in this melodramatic film. The main character Hanna (Pia Shah – who used to work for CAAM!) is a South Asian woman in a Korean American world, which is really interesting, but I felt like the film didn’t give any insight into what this is like – so, as a South Asian American woman watching this film – I couldn’t quite figure her out. But I was intriguied. Plus, it was great to see a sex scene between a South Asian woman and a Korean man. Something new. But, I agree with Sylvie on this one – not the Great Asian American Film I was looking for, either.

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I always feel like the innovation and excitement I’m looking for is there in the Shorts Programs. As usual, the Third I Shorts Program (sold out in San Francisco but not yet in San Jose) is really interesting. Pia Shah appears again in the melancholy, slightly dragging Canada by local filmmaker Anjali Sundaram. The other longish-short Ravi Goes to School – made in India – gives a great insight to the young generation of India who are working high-powered jobs and moving away from their families, yet still dealing with those in extreme poverty. It was exciting to see Clean Linen, a short from New Zealand – and Bare and 27,000 Days were great – though dark – experimental shorts about the sins of our fathers.

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There are also a bunch of shorts by South Asian Americans sneaked into other shorts programs, like the beautiful 24 Frames a Day by Sonali Gulati in the Memory Arcade program, Mira Nair’s AIDS awareness film Migration with big names stars like The Namesake’s Irfan Khan in the Borderlands program and M.I.A.’s video for the banging track "Bird Flu" in Music Video Asia and a really beautiful animation piece by Rinee Shah called Little Forest. The Seattle-based director Zia Mohajerjasbi also directed a music video for the Blue Scholars and a short called Manoj – but more about Manoj later.

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Like It’s Pretty to Think So, I was also fascinated by the number of films with South Asian characters or on South Asian subjects made by others. For example, there’s the incredible short documentary about a man who runs a mobile film cart in Kolkata called Salim Baba by Tim Sternberg, and another really fascinating short called A Son’s Sacrifice - that I actually saw on PBS a couple of months ago - about a half Puerto Rican, half Bangladeshi American who is helping take over his father’s halal business in Queens by Yoni Brook. There also a great stop motion animation short about Indian traffic called Horn OK Please about the day in the life of an Indian taxi driver which is "a creative collaboration between talent from West India and Northern Ireland." And a Malaysian film called Tiffin about a Indian servant girl who works for an older Chinese woman.

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Okay, so out of all the South Asian films at the festival I would have to say Manoj written by comic Hari Kondablu and directed by Zia Mohajerjasbi is by far my favorite. I saw it at the Third I Festival in the Fall and I watched the screener like three times at home because it is so brilliant. Basically, it is a mock-profile of a South Asian comic named Manoj who tells really terrible jokes – It’s beef! – and has a thick Indian accent. Right now, Manoj is at the top of my list in the running for the Great Asian American Film.

So, that's basically a wrap-up of most things South Asian at the SFIAAFF. I'll be back with more of an analysis about why Korean Americans are kicking ass and taking names when it comes to films and South Asian Americans are not later. Please weigh in as you see films at the festival.

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