The 19th edition of New York Asian Film Festival spotlighted films with women both in front of and behind the camera, emphasizing a specific focus on women filmmakers across the region. And while it was exciting to see women directors and stories highlighted in a festival lineup, these examples were exceptions to the rule. Among NYAFF’s slate of over 50 films and television episodes, only ten were directed by women. Men are overrepresented in film industries globally, especially in Asia where patriarchal values are so deeply entrenched in culture and society. Among the ten female directors represented in NYAFF’s lineup, […]
by Beatrix Chu on Oct 21, 2020The second-highest grossing Chinese film of all time, Operation Red Sea has earned over a half-billion dollars since its release this past February. Writer/director Dante Lam introduced the film at a New York Asian American Film Festival screening on June 30 and accepted the festival’s Daniel A. Craft Award for Excellence in Action Cinema. Operation Red Sea is loosely drawn from the real-life evacuation of Chinese hostages during the 2015 civil war in Yemen. In the movie version, Jiaolong, an elite task force, not only have to free hostages, they must also stop an attempt to sell yellowcake uranium to terrorists […]
by Daniel Eagan on Jul 9, 2018Running for nine solid years and organized by the folks over at Subway Cinema, the New York Asian Film Festival is a genre lover’s dream — a carefully curated crop of new films from Korea, Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, and anywhere else on the continent they can get their hands on a good movie, watched in the company of equally discerning fans. The 2011 edition is kicking off on July 1 with the film Milocrorze: A Love Story, a genre-bending samurai romance in the form of a musical variety show, from Yoshimasa Ishibashi. I’m intrigued already. I remember the first time […]
by Farihah Zaman on Jun 17, 2011