Asian American Cinema
Screen Savers
New York Style
IFFM '97

Asian American Cinema

The 15th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival will once again showcase features, documentaries, shorts and experimental works from all points of the Asian Pacific Diaspora. The annual event presented by the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) is scheduled for March 6-13, 1997, and will unspool at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theaters in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley.

Confirmed U.S. dramatic feature films to date include the premieres of Quentin Lee and Justin Lin's Shopping For Fangs, Rea Tajiri's Strawberry Fields and Chris Chan Lee's Yellow. Documentaries include Arthur Dong's Licensed to Kill, Arnold Iger and Paul Kwan's Pins and Noodles, and Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane C. Wagner's Girls like Us. Rounding out the strong selection are contemporary films from Korea (Hong Sang Soo's The Day a Pig Fell into the Well and Lee Ming Yong's A Hot Roof), Vietnam (Dang Nhat Minh's Nostalgia For Countryland) and China (Zhang Ming's Rainclouds over Wushan and Xie Fie's A Mongolian Tale). A special presentation on Hong Kong cinema curated by Asian-cinema critic and co-founder of the Hong Kong Film Festival Tony Rayns will be presented along with thematic programs on emerging directors, gay and lesbian works and works by and for youth. For further information please contact Corey Tong and Paul Yi, Festival Co-Directors at (415) 863-0814.

Screen Savers

The Independent Feature Project (IFP) in New York has set the dates for the sixth-annual "From Script to Screen" screenplay conference, and the deadline for script submissions to the accompanying "Beigel Screenplay Award."

The three-day conference will include several master class sessions, a case-study of a current film, panel discussions and small group workshops. The event is produced in association with the Writers Guild of America, East and will be held at New York's Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art from April 4-6.

The award for the most promising screenplay offers a cash prize of $5,000. In order to be eligible for the award, writers must be a member of the IFP or WGAE and must attend the conference. All writers submitting scripts will receive a 20-minute private consultation with a professional script consultant. The deadline for submitting a screenplay is March 21. For further information contact Karen Schwartzman, Program Manager at the IFP, (212) 465-8244, ext. 101.

New York Style

City Arts, WNET's weekly arts news magazine, takes a close look at independent filmmaking in the Big Apple on January 23 at 8pm and January 24 at midnight. In the special half-hour edition titled "Film & Filmmaking in New York," viewers will be treated to interviews with some of the directors, writers, producers and actors behind New York's indie film boom. Among them are Joe Morton, John Sayles, Richard Price, James Schamus, Adrian Shelly, Ed Burns and Ang Lee. The multiple EMMY award-winning program, produced by New York's PBS station Thirteen/WNET, features in-depth coverage of New York City's culture and arts scenes with topics chosen from the world of visual and performing arts - architecture, music, dance, theater, poetry and literature, performance art, film and photography. For further information on the indiefilm special contact Series Producer Jeff Folmsbee at (212) 560-2000 or visit WNET's website at http://www.wnet.org.

IFFM '97

The 19th Annual Independent Feature Film Market, presented by the Independent Feature Project, will be held from September 14 until September 21st in New York City. The first deadline for submissions to the IFFM is Friday, May 23 and the final deadline is Friday, June 13.

Applications will be available from the IFP in early March. IFFM orientation workshops for filmmakers interested in submitting their work to the IFFM will be held in various cities across the U.S. The first session will be held January 28th from 6-8 pm at the Boston Film Video Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. Other scheduled cities include: Philadelphia, Miami, Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York. For details and specific dates check the IFP's website at http://www.ifp.org.