NYAFF 2010
"The New York Asian Film Festival has been waving the fan-boy flag proudly since 2002. Glossy crime dramas and horror shows, martial-arts spectaculars, machine-gun-wielding schoolgirls...have led the way, as the series, which started with just 11 movies at the Anthology Film Archives, has grown to 45 films and moved to the uptown precincts of Lincoln Center 's Walter Reade Theater." -Mike Hale, The New York Times
WE'VE SOLD OUT! The New York Asian Film Festival was started to give New York audiences a taste of the kind of crazed populist filmmaking going on all over Asia, the kind of awesome movies that the Film Society of Lincoln Center would never screen. But we've always depended on the kindness of strangers and one of the kindest, and strangest, has been Gavin Smith, the editor of Film Comment and one of the programmers at the Film Society. He's been coming to the NYAFF for years, and at last year's festival as he got into his official Film Comment limousine, he slipped a $20 down our dress and whispered, “What do you think about coming uptown?”
How could we resist?
This move uptown is really about you, our audience. For ten years you've been partying up a storm at our weird little festival over on the margins and now the mainstream has finally caught up with your good taste. You loved the best movies before the rest of New York City was prepared for them, and now that they're finally ready, we think it would be unfair not to share.
And we're sharing a feast of films. This year, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office New York, we're celebrating Hong Kong's new wave of old school kung fu with Return to the Old School: Hong Kong's New Martial Arts Cinema. After 2009's IP MAN became a massive box office hit, savvy Hong Kong producers, eager to make a buck, unleashed a whole wave of old school martial arts films that went back to the basics: no CGI, no fancy wire work, no fakery. Just blazing hand-to-hand combat, hard-falling stuntmen and lightning fast kung fu.
Japan's film industry has been having its biggest box office in years, but all its mainstream movies have been intensely local, based on television shows or vehicles for pop stars. Fortunately, the NYAFF likes to dig, and we struck a rich vein of low budget, Japanese, independent movies that offer the kind of unhinged insanity that we used to get from the mainstream. These flicks, which include ANNYONG YUMIKA, 8000 MILES and LIVE TAPE, are Up From the Japanese Underground and they're as raw and potent as moonshine. We're also proud to be the launching pad for Nikkatsu's Sushi Typhoon label, under which some of the most deranged indie filmmakers (Takashi Miike, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Noboru Iguchi) will unleash hell on unsuspecting overseas audiences.
In a summer where the line-up from Hollywood largely consists of movies like MARMADUKE, we're on a rescue mission to save New York City from motion picture mediocrity. And we didn't come alone. We brought Sammo Hung, Bruce Leung, Simon Yam, Huang Bo, killer pigs, killer kids, friendly cows, giant robots and mutant girls. And behind them, there's you: our audience. You've always had our backs. And this summer we'll try not to let you down.
Welcome to an alternate universe where the summer blockbusters are movies like CONFESSIONS and BLADES OF BLOOD. Welcome to an alternate universe where the big Jackie Chan movie is not THE KARATE KID. Welcome to an alternate universe where selling out is how we're trying to save this city's moviegoing soul.
-Subway Cinema
