New York Asian Film Festival 2012
This year, the New York Asian Film Festival is bringing the crazy back! As ever, our two-fisted lineup is packed with the blockbusters, hit romances and wild comedies (and, yes, even a few art films) that are packing them in across Asia. And we’ll be delivering guests, wild ‘n’ wooly retrospective screenings, and the contemporary flicks that are scooping up awards and setting the box office on fire in Thailand, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan.
Lineup
Vulgaria
Opening Night! In person: director Pang Ho-cheung!
A hilariously offensive shock comedy about making movies, Pang Ho-cheung’s ode to filmmaking makes Borat look tame.
Doomsday Book
Centerpiece presentation! North American Premiere!
The much-anticipated three-part science fiction anthology from Kim Ji-Woon (I Saw The Devil) and Yim Pil-Sung (Hansel & Gretel). Robots! Meteors destroying the Earth! Viral outbreaks!
Guns and Roses
Centerpiece Presentation!
Ning Hao, China’s most adrenaline-charged director, delivers a bank heist black comedy that moves at 500 mph.
10+10
Directors from Hou Hsiao-hsien to Wei Te-Sheng (Seediq Bale), recruit an army of stars like Shu Qi for these 10 short films about Taiwan.
Ace Attorney
Takashi Miike brings one of the world’s most popular Nintendo DS games to the big screen and it’s all about…lawyers? Prepare to have your mind blown by this mashup of The Practice and The Avengers!
All About My Wife
North American Premiere!
In this all-star remake of an Argentinian romantic comedy, a husband is too timid to ask for a divorce, so he hires a “boyfriend” to woo his wife away.
Bloody Fight in Iron Rock Valley
North American Premiere!
A lone stranger rides into a town ruled by an out-of-control construction cartel, ready to settle scores in this award-winning, ultra-cool, modern day spaghetti western.
Blood Letter (CANCELED)
We regret that, due to unforeseen circumstances, the screening of Blood Letter on Thursday, July 12 at 9:00pm has been cancelled. It has been replaced with an additional screening of Dragon.
From out of left field comes this Vietnamese martial arts movie full of flying swordsmen, weapon-wielding woman warriors, and the kind of wu xia passion the world has just too little of.
Boxer’s Omen
Nothing can match the sheer lunacy of this Shaw Brothers martial arts classic about black magic. You are not prepared for the gut-churning special effects.
Couples
A remake of the NYAFF hit, A Stranger of Mine, this time-looping, multiple-POV Korean romance is about finding true love in the middle of the economic meltdown.
Crying Fist
In person: star Choi Min-Sik!
The director of City of Violence and the star of Oldboy team up for a boxing movie about two deadbeats who desperately need a comeback. A neglected classic of new Korean cinema.
Dead Bite
North American Premiere!
Like smoking a fat blunt on the beach, this hazy, crazy zombie flick is all enthusiastic gore and surreal humor. Directed by and starring Thailand’s one and only hip hop crew, Gancore Club.
Din Tao: Leader of the Parade
North American Premiere!
The biggest Taiwanese hit of 2012, it’s the true story of a Din Tao (drumming ritual) team of losers and misfits.
Dragon
Star Donnie Yen in person at July 9 screening! Additional screening added on July 12!
The word-of-mouth hit at Cannes last year, what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did for swordplay, it does for kung fu.
East Meets West 2011
North American Premiere!
Note: Q&A with director Jeff Lau has been cancelled.
Wong Kar-wai’s longtime collaborator, Jeff Lau, delivers an exhilarating comedy about reincarnated superheroes (and failed pop stars) that includes musical numbers, animated sequences, giant battles, and genuine heartbreak.
Failan
In person: star Choi Min-Sik!
Choi Min-Sik and Hong Kong superstar Cecilia Cheung are paired in this low key, heartfelt romance about missed opportunities.
Goke, the Bodysnatcher from Hell
Imagine a Mario Bava film, plus Lost, plus wild horror psychedelia from festival fave Hausu. Mind-bending retro madness.
Golden Slumbers
In person: director Davy Chou!
Obliterated by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Cambodia's lost cinema lives on in the memories of the filmmakers and stars who survived the genocide in this moving oral history.
Honey Pupu
Taiwan’s elegiac tone poem for the internet age about all the lost and missing people who are sliding over to an alternate earth.
Infernal Affairs 1 & 2
10th Anniversary screening! Actor Will Yun Lee in person for panel with creators of video game Sleeping Dogs.
Martin Scorsese remade Infernal Affairs as The Departed, but taken together these two movies are Asia’s richest, most complex crime epic. Note: Infernal Affairs screens at 6:00pm. Infernal Affairs 2 screens at 8:40pm.
Five Fingers of Death
In person: director Chung Chang-Wha!
Quite simply the most influential martial arts movie of all time, it launched the kung fu craze, paved the way for Bruce Lee, and is still a hard-hitting action flick.
The King of Pigs
In person: director Yeun Sang-Ho!
Fresh outta Cannes, this animated drama is about two adults trying to remember what exactly happened to them as kids when they attended a nightmarish high school.
The Lost Bladesman
In person: star Donnie Yen!
The writers of the Infernal Affairs films wrote and directed this movie that tells the tale of China’s revered warrior, General Kwan.
Love in the Buff
Appearance by Miriam Yeung
In 2010’s Love in a Puff, two people met in the alley behind their office and fell in love during smoke breaks. Pang Ho-cheung’s hilarious semi-sequel picks up with the couple—now living together and driving each other crazy—initiating a cycle of breaking up and getting back together again.
Make Up
North American Premiere!
A mortuary make-up artist finds that the latest body on her slab is the closeted gay high school teacher she had an affair with years before. So who killed her?
The Miami Connection
In person: star Grandmaster Y.K. Kim!
Gonzo, 80’s exploitation madness on acid, it’s all about a rock band that does martial arts and the drug-smuggling ninjas they must defeat.
Nameless Gangster
Star Choi Min-Sik in person at June 30 screening!
Time magazine compares this gangster epic favorably to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and they’re not wrong. Set in the 80’s, Choi Min-Sik is a corrupt customs inspector making his grab for the bloody, brass ring of gangsterdom.
Nasi Lemak 2.0
North American Premiere!
Note: Appearances by director Namewee and producer Fred Chong have been cancelled.
A food movie, directed by a rapper who has been investigated for sedition, that feels like a delirious early Stephen Chow movie. How could we not show it?
Oldboy
Pang Ho-Cheung’s First Attempt
In person: director Pang Ho-cheung! North American Premiere!
Hong Kong’s hottest director (Vulgaria, Love in the Buff) screens movies he made in high school, mocking himself live, Mystery Science Theater-style.
Red Vacance, Black Wedding
North American Premiere!
This two-part film about adultery is a sexy, funny, over-the-top exploration of why we cheat.
Sacrifice
Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) employs an all-star cast in this searing drama about a doctor who must sacrifice his own son to protect the child of a disgraced court official.
Scabbard Samurai
North American Premiere!
From the director and star of Symbol comes this deadpan comedy about a disgraced samurai who has 30 days to make a dejected boy prince laugh, or he has to kill himself.
A Simple Life
Sweeping awards from Venice to Hong Kong, this film turns a compassionate, unblinking eye on aging and dying. If you don’t cry, you’re probably a robot.
Starry Starry Night
North American Premiere!
This Taiwanese hit is a visually inventive heartbreaker about a 13-year-old girl who hides in an imaginary world to escape the reality of her parent’s divorce.
The Swift Knight
In person: director Chung Chang-Wha!
Lifetime Achievement Award-winner Chung Chang-Wha (Five Fingers of Death) counts this Shaw Brothers swordplay movie as his favorite of his own films.
The Sword Identity
A refreshing remix of the traditional martial arts film directed by the screenwriter of Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmasters.
War of the Arrows
Korea’s surprise blockbuster of 2011, this swashbuckling period action movie won 14 major film awards, and is a fist-pumping version of Robin Hood.
Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale 1 & 2
A special Fourth of July screening of the uncut, two-part Taiwanese blockbuster that is that country’s Braveheart about its indigenous peoples fighting for their freedom.
You Are the Apple of My Eye
Director Giddens Ko and star Michelle Chen in person July 1 & 2!
The biggest romantic hit of 2011, this bittersweet movie about the way nothing will ever top the first time you fall in love swept the box office across Asia.
Korean Short Film Madness
Featuring a short film (Night Fishing) directed by Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy) and his brother, as well as new shorts from Korea’s MSFF Genre Film Festival.
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