CINEMA PARADISE WRAP-UP

by Albert Lanier

The 3rd annual Cinema Paradise Film Festival in Honolulu, Hawaii came to a close on Thursday, September 23rd thus ending seven days of screenings, seminars and a couple of parties thrown in the mix.

This year's edition of Cinema Paradise-which ran from Friday, September 17 to Thursday, September 23rd at the Varsity Theares down from the University of Hawaii-proved to be even more relevant than last year with a couple of politically oriented documentaries in the festival's line-up such as BUSH'S BRAIN, OUTFOXED and EVERYWHERE BUT FLORIDA timed to be shown not just before the Presidential Election on Tuesday, November 2nd but also on Primary Election Day in Hawaii on Saturday, September 18.

Robert Greenwald's OUTFOXED, a highly enjoyable documentary that indicts Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel as an unfair and unbalanced journalistic outlet with a crystal clear right-wing agenda was one of the better docs at Cinema Paradise as was Liz Mermin's THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL about a small group of hair dressers who open a beautyschool for Afghan women in the capital of Afghanistan, Matt Kohn's EVERYWHERE BUT FLORIDA about ballot systems and machines and the need for voting reform especially viz-a viz the electoral college system and Peter Chappell and Catherine Paix's THE ORIGIN OF AIDS which examine the possibility that the Human Immuno Deficiency Virus may have the unintended result of an oral polio vaccine adminstered to at least a miilion people in what was then the Belgian Congo in Africa in 1960.

Festival Directors Sergio Goes and Chris Kahunahana and their tiny programming staff expanded the festival's feature film section to 10 films (an 11th film-ABADAN from Iran-scheduled to run during the fest ended up not being shown).

Besides the fine child-centered South African drama WOODEN CAMERA, Cinema Paradise's best features included the fine first feature GREEN HAT from Chinese director Liu Sen Dou, a film about two "victims" of love-a bank robber who gets dumped long distance over the phone by his girlfriend for another man and who is living in the United States and winds up blowing his brains out in despair over his lost love and the cop- who witnesses the lovelorn bank thief's death-with problems of his own: his wife is screwing a younger man and wants a divorce and the police officer has been physically impotent for some time.

Liu shows a deft hand here in GREEN HAT moving smoothly from one story into the next and skillfully drawing perfrmances from his actors that demonstrate how love both quickly disintegrates and slowly erodes with men on the recieving end of romantic disintegration.

Liu also shows a nice use of color here by using greens and reds deliberately and effectively (the title "Green Hat" is a Chinese saying which posits that a man who has been cuckolded by his wife or girlfriend is said to wear a green hat and a red scarf worn by a man usually denotes him as a prostitute) underline the theme of the loss of love and betrayal with green bottles in red cases stacked all inside a store where the bank robber makes his call to his girlfriend in one scenes while in another shot the cop confronts his wife's lover in a room filled with green lockers and a couple of red benches.

Another fine feature was Jacob Gentry's LAST GOODBYE, a drama reminiscent of P.T. Anderson's MAGNOLIA that juggles three or four characters-an actress on a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ BLADE type tv show called SOUTHERN GOTHIC, a rather agitated office worker, the lead singer in a rock band called Altruistic and underage groupie who has a horny crush on him- with their own storylines which eventually converge and meet at varied points thus showing the connections they all to each other.

Set in Atlanta, LAST GOODBYE is fairly well crafted independent film that captures the nuances of the city largely through its characters. Though well-known Hollywood thespians David Carradine and Faye Dunaway have supporting roles in the film (Carradine plays a preacher who doesn't mind partaking of an adult beverage and Dunaway fills the role of a supposedly "deep" Hollywood director looking to cast the SOUTHERN GOTHIC star in her upcoming movie), the mostly unknown cast carry this film and they do an admirable job aided by fine direction from Gentry.

The Beyond the Reef surf section was shorten this year to only a few films including three shown under the Moonshine Conspiracy banner.

A new section was introduced this year-Next Coast: Films for the Next Generation which targeted younger viewers. Essentially this section was acollection of films being shown in other sections during the festival this year and included the doc TUPAC RESURRECTION, the short film THE QUESTION and the computer animated short ROCKFISH.

In fact, ROCKFISH-directed by Tim Miller-about a miner prospecting for precious metals on a rocky barren planet who finds more than he bargained for was one of the better animated films in a solid animation section.

Other standout animated shorts included Jim Goodman's claymation comedy THE DEVIL & MANNY SCMECKSTEIN about a elderly stand-up comedian sent to hell who needs only one laugh from anyone in order to transfer to Heaven and Aaron Bitzer's very funny DATING DOESN'T LIKE ME which uses a number of disembodied smiling (and frowning) faces along with a humourous voice over to delve into the untrammeled misery that is the dating realm.

The Flash TV competition section known as the Greatest Story Never Told (all shorts were drawn and created on Macromedia Flash MX) was another strong section this year. My favorites were Grand Prize winner STINKY by Mark Greene and THE WRITE GADGET by Dalila Boyd.

Experimental films were lackluster this year and the films clustered in this section were not helped by a poor programming decision that lumped them together with the local film program both of which were screened on Monday, September 20th (due in part to the length of 22 minute short DANCELAND by Jeffrey Moneo and 18 minute short THE MAKING OF AMERICANS by Caecilia Tripp as well as the other experimental and local films screened during this block ended up going past the alotted time and delaying the feature scheduled to play in the same theater).

In any event, the only films worth mentioning here were Tomas Casas intriguing SWEET SAMOA, Yohei Kawamata's hilarious THE HAIRS about a man who winds up rubbing off almost all his cranial and facial hairs and Davina Pardo's BIRDLINGS TWO which features a voice over conversation between a father and his daughter about his past and the choices he made.

Despite my avoidance of locally-made film shown at Hawaii film festivals, Cinema Paradise's crop of short films made in Hawaii ended up not making me puke with disgust.

However, only three films are worth noting. Robert Pennybaker's THE RED HIBISCUS is a fairly well shot greyish black and white film about a private eye on the trail of a former 50's torch singer who disappeared from sight on the day Hawaii gained its statehood in 1959.

John Brekke's VENT is set largely on the roof of a community theater while a play is in progress. A few actors hang out while waiting for their cues to return to the performance: they bitch and moan about other performances, argue over differing forms of personal acting technique and try to make plans for going out after the show. While not a terribly intriguing story, VENT is watchable with serviceable enough performances from its cast and better camerawork, sound and cinematography than most locally produced films.

Finally, the 26 minute AMASIAN: THE AMAZING ASIAN is an extremely broad super hero parody starring local comic Paul Ogata as the mostly bored Amazing Asian- a superhero who gained his superpowers to fly and quickly figure out math problems by eating radioactive rice as an toddler-who must stop his nemesis Waianae Man-a large Polynesian man who likewise ingested chemicals in his younger years and can fly due to his radioactive rubber slippers-from using a remote controlled device to maneuver a large meteorite to hit earth thus creating a gigantic wave which he will ride ad infinitum.

AMASIAN-directed by Gerard Ellmore-is a transparently low budgeted "epic" filled with brain dead jokes, simplistic racial stereotypes, amateurish performances and extremely crude computer generated special effects.

And yet I sort of liked AMASIAN. Granted, the film can only be classified a extremely guilty pleasure but the short possesses a loony charm and some funny but transparently over the top performances from the Hawaiian Guy from Molokai (no, I'm not making that up-that's the name he was billed under) as the moronic Waianae Man, Brian Lentz as Waianae Man's caucasian minion Haole Man and comedian and actor Andy Bumatai as the Chief Inspector. Live-action shorts were quite good this year as well. At the top of the list were Brendan Doyle's PRESS GANG about a young woman seeking to dodge a reinstituted military draft in the year 2006, Andy Watts highly watchable and entertaining DEATH DEALER: A DOCUMENTARY starring Henry Rollins as a hit man/ angel of death who is followed by a camera crew as he carries out his assignments and Brad Abbelson's SAVE VIRGIL about the animated progeny of a flesh and blood mother (voiced hilarious by former MAN SHOW star Adam Corolla) who seeks to find the love of his life, the star of the animated series VIKING GIRL.

Attendance at the 2004 Cinema Paradise started out strong during the festival's opening weekend with packed screenings of first night films THE LAND HAS EYES and POINT AND SHOOT but started to dip by Sunday with anemic attendance at afternoon screening on Monday and Tuesday though turnout was slowly begining to rise a bit by Tuesday night and begin to move up on Wednesday and Thursday.

Festival goers had the option to purchase tickets and "all access" festival passes online for the first time this year and the internet option proved to be popular early on-festival passes were sold out by the first day of the festival largely due to internet sales.

Despite slackening attendance through the middle part of the festival, Cinema Paradise put forth a fine slate of films clearly improving its lineup of selections over last year's festival and staking a clear claim as the alternative film experience on Oahu and perhaps throughout Hawaii.

HIFF SCREENS SERIOCOMIC KOREAN FILM ...ING AS SNEAK PREVIEW

The lighthearted but tragic South Korean feature...ING was screened on Thursday, September 30 in Honolulu as a preview of 2004 Hawaii International Film Festival scheduled to run from Thursday, October 21 to Sunday, October 31 throughout the state.

...ING-which stars Lee Mi-Sook, Im Su-Jeong and Kim Nae-won-is scheduled to have its official U.S. Premiere at this year's film festival.

The 105 minute feature film, directed by Lee Eon-hee, had two preview screenings on September 30 at 6:30 and 8:45 at Honolulu's Dole Cannery theatres multiplex (formerly owned by Signature now acquired by Regal Cinema company).

Attendance-largely limited to members of HIFF's Ohana who pay anywhere from $35 to $1,000 for tickets and other perks during the festival-was strong with many HIFF supporters obviously forgoing watching news analysis of that day's Presidential debate in Florida.

...ING opens with a shot of sunlight bursting through a group of leaves before quickly cutting to a group of teenage uniformed school girls walking enmasse on a city sidewalk and crossing the street to go to school.

One schoolgirl walking across the street drops her headphones right in the middle of the street with cars all about her.

An adult male comes into frame. He is a crossing guard of sorts who carries two different color flags which he uses to ward off traffic as he has in the case of this young school girl.

We cut to close ups of both the girl and the monitor's faces.

Then, she begins to walk off to walk the remainder of the street and the man resumes his whistling and flag waving at traffic.

The schoolgirl is Mina, the protagonist of ...ING and the crossing guard-while not a pivotal character as regards the mechanics of the plot or story-exerts a powerful emotional influence over Mina.

You see, this man was in love with a fellow female student while in high school and she was tragically hit by a car on the exact same street where he helps schoolgirls cross and stops traffic.

So crushed was the man by his teenage love's premature death that he dedicated himself to working as a crossing guard and making sure no other students-primarily female-get struck by oncoming traffic.

At one point, Mina tearfully states how moved she is by this man's sad story which is interesting because Mina has had a bit of a tough life herself. In and out of hospitals all of her life due to a lingering illness, Mina was such a continual presence on the floor of one hospital that she was nicknamed "the 13th floor fixture."

Mina's restauranteur mother Misuk has opted to keep her daughter at home with her and let her attend high school despite the unlikeliness of any recovery from her malady.

Mina and Misuk's relationship is casual and warm, really more of a friendship-complete with kidding comments and funny asides from mom-than anything else.

Into Mina's life comes Young-je, a twenty-something student with an interest in photography who has recently moved into a downstairs apartment in Mina's building.

Young-je pesters Mina at first, asking to borrow her sliver lighter-the only memento Mina has that belonged to her long absent father-and not readily giving it back when they first meet.

Gradually, a friendship and perhaps a slight romance of sorts develops despite Young-je's rather carefree and irritating demeanor and Mina's reserved and introspective nature.

I guess it doesn't take a Ph d in Cinema Studies to surmise that ...ING will move toward a tragic but life-affirming ending. There will also be a slight twist or two which of course Iam not going to reveal.

...ING is a well-meaning, fairly well-executed feature. The performances are generally effective, the direction is surefooted and fine overall and the screenplay does an adequate job of creating interesting enough characters.

Still,...ING manages to miss the mark. I think the problem is that though Director Lee does his best to take this sickly character/disease of the week material and infuse it with life and warmth, the story just ends seeming a bit pedestrian and formulaic.

Perhaps the problem is that it is often difficult to surmount situations that are tried and true emotional staples withut falling slightly into melodrama.

In fact, the true drama in ...ING seems misplaced. The crossing guard and his tragic story seems a far more potent hook on which to hang a story rather than Mina, Misuk and Young-je's lives

...ING is an admirable enough effort and I liked some of the characters but the end result is a film that fails to rise above the level of the mundane drama.

From some of the reactions of audiencegoers that night, it appeared that those HIFF patrons on hand appeared to enjoy the movie.

Those filmgoers will have a lot to choose from in late October when the festival starts its run including the U.S. and International premieres of CLEAN and STEAMBOY as well as the expected presence of Maggie Cheung and David Wenham who will serve on this year's HIFF jury.

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