ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS FROM THE 25TH ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (AAIFF) EDITION OF CINEVUE

JUSTIN LIN
"Passion, A Good Team and Leverage" — 2002 AAIFF

ERIC LIN
"Alter Egos" — 2002 AAIFF

MARLINA GONZALES
"Finding 32 East Broadawy, Asian CineVision's First Home" — 2002 AAIFF

ROGER GARCIA
"Shopping for Space on the Shelf" — 2002 AAIFF

 
 
 

FINDING 32 EAST BROADWAY,
ASIAN CINEVISION'S FIRST HOME
Marlina Gonzales

1984. We had just moved to New York from Texas as newlyweds, with Master's degrees diplomas tucked somewhere between our life's belongings in the back of a rented car. The existential musings of Albert Camus, Maslowe's theories on the hierarchy of needs, Noel Burch's "distant observations" of Japanese cinema sloshed dizzily around in our newly-attained Americanized graduate psyches along with the proud knowing that I could correctly pronounce Agnes Varda's "Une Chante, L'Autre Pas."

My ex-husband, Nicky Tamrong, had just gotten accepted to the Ph.D. Theater program at CUNY. For almost a year, I had nothing to do but not be the traditional Asian wife while exploring the Big Apple and hoping for close intellectual encounters with Molly Haskell, Pauline Kael and Amalie Rothschild. But two film experiences were to change my perspective about the moving images forever.

While meandering through the streets of Manhattan on one of those empty afternoons, I was attracted to the marquee outside Lincoln Plaza Theater. “Dimsum”. The title spoke to me, like the sign just tapped me personally on the shoulder. Pssst! Yes, hey you, we got this film just for you! As I asked for "Dimsum" at the ticket window, the word tumbled out of my mouth as if I were uttering the password for a secret society only I and a few chosen others knew about. For the next hour and a half, I sat in the dark not quite understanding why my empathy for the characters on the screen was like no other relationship I have ever had for any film character I had ever encountered on the American screen. No amount of film theory could explain what was running through my head and my heart. Here, in a theater on the Upper Westside of Manhattan, I felt like some kind of amnesiac watching a home movie about people who knew me so well but whom I don't ever remember actually meeting. Or have I? I searched for a film theory in my head to name this bizarre but comforting cinematic experience. But no amount of graduate film school had prepared me for this encounter. Wayne Wang's Dimsum was my first Asian American film experience.

Suddenly, it felt like New York City had actually prepared for my coming by planting that delightful surprise right smack in the middle of my direction-less early Manhattan days. But it must have been one of those days when we were shopping in Chinatown for some elusive Asian ingredient that I got my déjà vu Dimsum experience. Walking down crowded Canal Street towards Bowery with rustly plastic bags stuffed with bitter melons, nam priks, siopaos and a can of jasmine tea, my eyes almost popped out when I caught a glimpse of the marquee on Rosemary Theater. Lino Brocka's Jaguar was showing at this small Chinatown theater right next to the Manhattan Bridge. I had worked for Lino as a TV production assistant and as lighting manager for his theater production back in Manila, when he was emerging as one of the most highly respected Filipino filmmakers. What was he doing in New York Chinatown?

Having just emerged from the Dimsum experience, I knew I had to get to the bottom of this. The people sitting behind some tables outside Rosemary Theater told me, between slurps of noodle soups, that Brocka's film was part of the Asian American International Film Festival run by an organization called Asian CineVision. I decided to call and see if they needed volunteers to work on the festival.

Up three flights of rickety stairs, I was greeted by Asian CineVision's executive director, Peter Chow, who proceeded to ask me the usual obligatory questions one asks during a job interview. Three conversations and two weeks later, he offered me the job of Exhibition Director, managing, among others, the very same film festival that brought Lino Brocka to New York. On top of that, he showed me pictures of Wayne Wang and a host of other Asian American filmmakers, all taken in the ACV office. For the next five years, I had the extraordinary honor of showing 'the best and brightest' (quoted from many an AAIFF catalogue) Asian and Asian American film and videomakers.

In the process of searching for the elusive film theory that would have explained the reverse amnesia I experienced watching my first Asian American film, I found an Asian America on the big screen, in the streets of Manhattan (and apparently coast to coast!) and today, from video stores to film schools and international film festivals bearing the names of filmmakers who had their first or early American screenings at the AAIFF.

My admiration for European and American filmmakers, film historians, critics and theorists was transformed, replaced by the stories, histories, images of what seemed to be, yes, a secret society peopled by Asian bachelors on Hawaiian plantations, families interned in Japanese concentration camps, manongs fighting for a right to stay in the I-Hotel, a young Vincent Chin man whose life ends with a baseball bat to his head on the eve of his wedding, a mother who undergoes surgery to 'correct' her slanted eyes. What film school did not teach me, a litany of passionate filmmakers taught us, without theory, the truths hidden from our view by the bigger screens of Hollywood. I knew then, that my real mentors were all the filmmakers who showed their works through AAIFF. There is not enough space in the existing pages of American cinema history books to pay tribute to all of them. But through AAIFF (as well as through the work of NAATA and VC and a host of other Asian American exhibition venues, books, university courses), we are just beginning to finally accord them the honor they so deserve.

Marlina Gonzalez, Festival Director, Asian American International Film Festival 1986-1990