The Official DC Asian Pacific American Film Blog

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Festival's Opening Night

By many accounts, Opening Night of the 8th annual APA film festival was a success. We couldn’t have asked for a better opening venue than downtown Silver Spring’s AFI Silver Theater, where Justin Lin’s Sundance-debuting feature mockumentary, FINISHING THE GAME, screened to a receptive, enthusiastic audience. The crowd, consisting of students, professionals and fellow filmmakers, took the opportunity during an engaging Q&A to pick the minds of ever-candid director Justin Lin, actors Roger Fan and Sung Kang, and producer Julie Asato, who had arrived in DC earlier that afternoon, their latest stop on a months-long, nationwide grassroots tour to promote their film.

For those who missed FINISHING THE GAME on Thursday, you can catch it On Demand on October 5, the same day the film opens in New York at the IFC Center.

Before screening the feature, we revealed the winner of the 2nd annual film festival trailer contest. Congrats to Paul Moore, whose entry, FILM RAMEN, will be shown before each screening as our official festival trailer. Also unveiled was the POV Youth Workshop film, an impressive, first-time filmmaking effort by a group of young individuals, whose enthusiasm for film was evident from the way they engaged actor Roger Fan in the lobby of AFI after the crowds shuffled outside.

For the reception, we headed over to nearby Gallery Restaurant and Lounge, where festival-goers, staffers and volunteers sipped martinis and noshed on complimentary food in the cool, cavernous basement lounge. For those feeling extra alert, the partying continued at DC night spot 1223 with Justin, Roger and Sung into the wee hours of the night.

Interested in learning more about Justin Lin? A brief feature on the director, and his entourage, appears in the “A Night Out With…” column in the Sunday New York Times.

The festival continues today with an entire day’s worth of choice documentaries and feature films, beginning with BOLINAO 52, a powerful documentary about the Vietnamese boat people, followed by slick crime drama UNDOING, at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater. Day three of the festival continues with MY BODY/MY LOVE, a selection of Queer Asian shorts at the Navy Memorial Theater, before concluding with AMERICAN ZOMBIE, Grace Lee’s film about zombie subculture in Los Angeles, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and THE GREAT HAPPINESS SPACE: TALE OF AN OSAKA LOVE THIEF, an entertaining glimpse into the world of male host clubs in Japan, showing at the Navy Memorial Theater.

These, and other films, you can purchase tickets for, and read about, here.

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