Queer filmgoers checking out this year's CAAMFest are in for a crazy-quilt menu of treats and sour dumplings. The mix includes a tribute to the Bay Area's own H.P. Mendoza; a fictional bio of the now-toxic anti-gay Filipino boxer-politician Manny Pacquiao; and the delightful return of the Singaporean filmmaker Royston Tan, whose portrait of his island nation's slum kids, 15, inspired my favorite B.A.R. headline: "Singapore tattooed love-boys."
Formerly known as the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, the now re-branded CAAMFest (for Center for Asian American Media) returns for its 34th edition on March 10-20 in a dazzling variety of venues (Castro, Roxie, Alamo Draft House, New People Cinema, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Slate Bar, City College of San Francisco North Beach & Chinatown campuses, SF Asian Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, SomaR Bar, Parkway Theater) and formats around the Bay Area. This column is devoted to film and video programs.
A veteran queer Asian media star is getting his own two-day retrospective, CAAMFest Spotlight Filmmaker H.P. Mendoza . He's not Larry Hart, Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim, but San Francisco's own H.P. Mendoza does have a witty way with a lyric, especially in bawdy bar ballads such as the following, sung by two unattached gay boys who discover that they're magnificently incompatible in Fruit Fly, Mendoza's follow-up to his 2006 Bay Area songathon Colma: The Musical.
"I'm what you call a versatile bottom./I'll give it a shot, but I'd rather you top."
"We're versatile bottoms!"
"I don't like people who hold in their voices./You should shout it loud when you're being plowed."
"Don't worry, honey, I shatter your windows./This chicken will cluck when he's being fucked!"
Mendoza's films feature a deliciously dishy assortment of metrosexuals, gay boys, fag hags, lesbians, and straight, ego-inflating performance artists battling for their share of coveted spots on stage. In the spirit of Avenue Q, the casts of Colma: The Musical and Fruit Fly opine about our notoriously fickle public-transit systems just in time for the latest BART service meltdowns, shared-housing arrangements, and such messy questions as, When does a blind date morph into a hookup? (Asian Art Museum Takeover, Thurs., 3/17; Alamo, Sun., 3/13)
CAAMFest also features a full-length biography about Filipino boxer-politician Manny Pacquiao, a film completed before the 47-year-old athlete made some extremely offensive remarks about members of the LGBTQ community. In an interview with a radio station in his island nation, the former pugilist and current politician was quoted as saying, "It's common sense. Do you see animals mating with the same sex? Animals are better because they can distinguish male from female. If men mate with men and women mate with women, they are worse than animals." Here is a description of the docudrama film screening at CAAMFest:
Kid Kulafu (US) Paul Soriano directs this bio-pic about a Filipino slum kid who used his country's rough-and-tumble boxing tournaments as means of overcoming poverty and his lack of a quality education. With a cast of unknowns from the islands, the film depicts Manny Pacquiao's two-decades-long career, beginning as World Flyweight Champ in 1998. (Roxie, 3/11)
Yeu (Love) Viet Max helms Vietnam's first LGBTQ film, about an unlikely romance between two female singer-songwriters. (Alamo, 3/12)
3688 (Singapore) Openly queer filmmaker Royston Tan returns to the big screen after an absence of seven years with the tale of a parking attendant, Fei Fei, who signs up for a TV singing contest to aid her dementia-suffering father. (Alamo, 3/13; New Parkway, 3/19)
Atomic Heart (Iran) Iranian filmmaker Ali Ahmadzadeh offers this kinetic road movie whose inciting incident is a late-night road accident. (Roxie, 3/12)
France is Our Mother Country (France/Cambodia) Oscar-nominated Cambodian director Rithy Panh uses footage from the vaults to construct a sad/funny sendup on the brutalities of French colonialism.
Be About It (US) Christopher C.C. Wong investigates the epidemic of hepatitis B among Asian American athletes. Journalist Alan Wang and athlete AJ Jabonero are featured participants in this 39-minute doc. (Alamo, 3/13; New Parkway, 3/19)
Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (US) The Festival celebrates the 10th anniversary of American director Justin Lin's entry in this salute to the sport of high-octane street racing. (Alamo, 3/13)
Tyrus (US) Pamela Tom directs the Festival's opening-night tribute to 105-year-old animator Tyrus Wong, whose many contributions to his art-form include his work on Walt Disney's Bambi. (Castro, 3/10) Plus, don't miss the rare opportunity to see Bambi (director David Hand) at the Walt Disney Family Museum. Back in the early 1940s, many a child viewing this beautiful if dark fable was traumatized by the death of Bambi's mother. See it with kids and discover whether it's still that way. (3/19, 20)
Painted Nails (US) Directors Dianne Griffin & Erica Jordan explore the health implications of women's beauty aids, particularly nail adornments, for the mostly female beauty-care technicians in San Francisco's Mission District. (Alamo, 3/12; New Parkway, 3/20)
Drawing the Tiger (US) Three American doc makers, Amy Benson, Scott Squire, and Ramyata Limbu, uncover a painful tragedy involving tigers and a rural Nepali family. (Roxie, 3/11)
Mad Tiger (US) Jonathan Yi & Michael Haertlein explore the odd developments in the ties that bind a two-person hip band. (Alamo, 3/11; New People, 3/19)
Mele Murals (US) Tadashi Nakamura films an attempt in Hawaii to teach youth there about their people's traditions through the medium of graffiti. (OMCA, 3/18; New People, 3/19)
Two Lunes (US) Hui-Eun Park draws parallels between the lives of two women, one Korean and the other Vietnamese, as they both struggle to improve their lives in an increasingly chaotic world. (Alamo, 3/12)
Info: caamedia.org.