ACV presents AAIFF13 National Festival Tour

Are y’all ready to bring great independent cinema to your hometown? Because we are! With 6 features and 9 shorts program, you can book one or more programs for your conference or non-profit/corporate gathering.

Featuring the year’s best independent cinema – six narrative and documentary features and nine shorts programs from AAIFF13, the National Festival Tour offers institutions and organizations the rare opportunity to bring the newest, the most original and diverse independent Asian and Asian American films to local communities across the country.

The programs cater to interests in such areas as Asian American history and representation, contemporary Asian culture, urban culture, youth culture, international politics, identity politics, queer culture, non-fiction media arts, etc – and more possibilities will arise when you mix and match! Check out what is available as well as the rental details on this page. Contact programs@asiancinevision.org directly with any inquiry — we respond right away!

Happy browsing. 🙂

HOW TO ORDER
[expand title=”Show More”]

ABOUT THE AAIFF 2013-2014 NATIONAL FESTIVAL TOUR

Featuring the year’s best independent cinema–narrative and documentary features and shorts programs–from AAIFF13, the National Festival Tour offers institutions and organizations the rare opportunity to bring new, independent Asian and Asian American films to local communities across the country. Groups may rent feature-length films and shorts programs from the AAIFF13 for one-time public and private screenings. The only traveling festival of its kind in the U.S., a percentage of the rental fees is paid directly to the filmmakers, making it a great way for your organization to directly support independent filmmakers and artists.

All requests must be made using the Tour Request Form. Please provide at least two weeks before screening or a $25 rush charge will apply. You must receive a confirmation by email or the order is not confirmed. All films are DVD format.

SHIPPING
All films must be returned the next business day after the screening date. Exhibitors are responsible for two-way shipping and insurance. A late return fee equal to 50% of the rental fee will be charged. Exhibitors are liable for any damage to prints.

CANCELLATIONS
If a cancellation is received after payment, an administrative fee of $20 per title will apply without exception.

COPYRIGHT
All films and videos are protected by United States copyright law. All rentals are expressly for one-time screenings only. Duplication, reproduction, alteration, television broadcast or cablecast (except for on-campus closed circuit), loaning for a fee, leasing, sublicensing to others, and commercial usage (such as charging for admission) are strictly prohibited. All other usage must obtain express permission from Asian CineVision prior to screening date and advertisement of such event. National Tour programs are available for rent only; if you wish to purchase the program, let us know and we will contact our filmmakers.

PAYMENT
Payment is accepted by check (payable to “Asian CineVision”) or credit card. Custom programs are available and can be produced according to the requirements of your organization or community. Asian CineVision provides special rates for student organizations, high schools and public libraries. Discounts are not available for custom shorts programs.

RENTAL FEES
Feature Film: $150 Standard / $75 Schools, Libraries & Nonprofits
Shorts Programs: $150 Standard / $75 Schools, Libraries & Nonprofits
Custom Program: $250
Rush Charge: $25
Cancellation Fee: $20
[/expand]

FEATURES

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER | Director Brea GRANT | 2012 | USA | 82 mins
A droll mix of BFF bickering and road movie with an unusual nuclear apocalyptic setting, BEST FRIENDS FOREVER follows two gals, the unsuccessful optimist Harriet (Brea GRANT) and her devil-may-care best friend Reba (Vera MIAO), as they hit the road for Austin, TX for Harriet’s start-over. Along the way, strangers begin to act very strangely indeed. A Slamdance 2013 spotlight, GRANT’s assured directorial debut film will charm and entertain with its fluid commentary on friendship and its darker shadings of panic and vigilantism.

HAFU | Directors Megumi NISHIKURA and Lara Perez TAKAGI | 2013 | Japan | 87 mins | English, Japanese w/ES
With its plethora of cultural meanings, both positive and negative, Hafu is a term used to describe a Japanese of mixed heritage. Detailing the nuances of this hybridity, directors Megumi NISHIKURA and Lara Perez TAKAGI, both Hafu themselves, tell a compelling story of the voices and visibility of the Hafu identity with five stories of Hafu Japanese as they connect to their other roots in Australia, Korea, Venezuela, Mexico and Ghana to give us an absorbing look at ways of being Japanese.

HARANA | Director Benito BAUTISTA | 2012 | Philippines/ USA | 103 mins | English, Tagalog w/ES
Harana is a long-abandoned Filipino courtship serenade, which originated in the Spanish colonial period. In this award-winning documentary, guitarist Florante AGUILAR returns to the Philippines from the US for the first time in twelve years to discover three of the last remaining harana masters: a farmer, a fisherman, and a tricycle driver. HARANA emotively weaves their performances to exemplify the past and present, the here and there, and the rural and urban.

INNOCENTS | Director WONG Chen-hsi | 2012 | Singapore | 88 min | English, Malay w/ES
A delicate story of the friendship between two tweens, each estranged at home. Transfer student Syafiqah, a Malay girl, befriends Ah Huat, a Chinese boy and half-wild prankster in their teachers’ eyes. The two little souls resort to the lush mountain, away from a dysfunctional adult world–driven by divorce, drunkenness, and darkness. But cruelties ensue, and the monsoon rain arrives. An exquisite feature debut by WONG Chen Hsi, INNOCENTS is marked with masterful atmospheric depiction of the worlds shared by the children that makes it a “tone-poem” film.

REQUIEME! | Director Loy ARCENAS | 2012 | Philippines | 97 mins | Tagalog w/ES
Loy ARCENAS’ adroitly layered REQUIEME! riffs off the Gianni VERSACE – Andrew CUNANAN case from, literally, the Other side. Ambitious local politician Swanie holds a wake for a distant relative who has become an instant celebrity after killing a famous American designer; all while her dressmaker transgender son sacrifices her breast transplant money to help bury a neighbor. With its absurd veneer and colorful characters, ARCENAS paints a picaresque yet emotionally complex tale of a small Philippine town as it reacts to a faraway incident through its own haze of desire, ambition, and estrangement.

SOMEONE I USED TO KNOW | Director Nadine TRUONG | 2013 | USA | 79 mins
After almost losing his girlfriend, his job and his life, suicidal Charlie heads to L.A. to reconnect with his best friends from high school: Luke, a now-famous actor, and Danny, a rich boy. They are joined by some others in the Hollywood Hills. The glittering city below reverberates with the thirty-somethings feeling around their past friendships as their lives have grown apart. Nuanced and incisive, this bitter-sweet feature debut of German-born Vietnamese filmmaker Nadine TRUONG plays out a series of revelations as the night wears on.

STEVE CHONG FINDS OUT SUICIDE IS A BAD IDEA | Director Charlie LAVOY | 2013 | USA | 81 mins
Every time Steve CHONG screws up, he writes it down and pins up the note card on his wall. As the wall’s last bare patch is covered, he decides that it is time to die. But before he kills himself, Steve invites three friends to his family’s lake house for one final round of intoxication. A surprising passion project by a group of New Orleans cinephiles, STEVE CHONG FINDS OUT THAT SUICIDE IS A BAD IDEA proudly shows the real boom of Louisiana underground film scene through this intriguing story.

SHORTS PROGRAMS

AN UNBOUNDED ROMANCE | 6 Short Films | Total Running Time: 89 mins

What is the incomprehensibility of love that seduces us to unravel it? Perhaps it is the pointed question that deters us from loving, as well as compels us to love. These six short films explore this idea as couples come together or fall apart, get stuck or bid farewell, experiencing happiness, sensuality, fulfillment and entrapment.

ENDURING ENCOUNTERS | 5 Short Films | Total Running Time: 75 mins

From the racial tension between Asian and Afro Americans, disillusioned Pakistani refugees to Uyghur pickpockets roaming in the streets of Central China, these heart-wrenching stories provide insights on how the disfranchised are sent on a downward spiral to a limbo where everything could possibly go awry.

FOR YOUTH BY YOUTH | 5 Short Films | Total Running Time: 37 mins

Encompassing animation, narrative, and documentary shorts, For Youth by Youth program celebrates works by media makers of Asian descent under the age of 21, articulating their perceptions of life and the world in the most original voice.

HISTORIES REVISITED | 4 Short Films | Total Running Time: 102 mins

From the imprint the Korean War’s brutality etched upon the psyches of individuals to the continuing pain of separation caused by the country’s division, from the painful suspicion waged upon Japanese-Americans during WWII to the fight against injustice from within the Little Tokyo, the program examines the histories of Pan Asian communities in the 20th Century that has seen the ideological and ethnic conflicts.

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS | 7 Short Films | Total Running Time: 80 mins

Crossing experimental drama, family drama, animation and documentary, the program revolves around the theme of departing from or returning to the place called home.

IN TIMES OF INNOCENCE | 5 Short films | Total Running Time: 80 mins

With a power and imagination uninhibited by their length, these five beautiful shorts capture the strength and pitfalls of familial bonds. The program explores the comedic, dysfunctional and inexplicable tensions that characterize those bonds, and illumines our weaknesses under unknown forces – whether it is power, economic uncertainty, loss of innocence, grief, or simply the unknown.

INTO THE PENUMBRA | 5 Short Films | Total Running Time: 89 mins

Asian American representation in mainstream media has always been a struggle. Only those who envisage a possible shattering of the status quo could pioneer change. Through persevering artistic expression, life-risking investigative journalism, or satirical potential of Youtube, these five stories exemplify the various ways by which Asian Americans have made inroads in our history and present.

REFRACTIONS OF A RAINBOW (LGBTQ Program) | 4 short films | total running time: 64 mins

The four films in this program, all with an undertone of gay identity, tell the stories of the woes of coming of age, racial tensions, homegoing and recuperating the memory of a family member.

TAIWAN CINEMA DAYS | 5 short films | total running time: 84 mins

Taipei City witnesses the reluctant parting of a Singaporean soldier from his beautiful Taiwanese girlfriend; a boy framed for theft squats in a pineapple patch in the South; an aboriginal man ruminates upon his tribe’s predicament in a developing world. The three cherry-picked shorts, interspersed with two refreshing animations, comprehensively present the various topographies of Taiwan, and briskly depart from the rich legacies of Taiwanese masters like Hou and Yang.