First Titles Announced For the 2006 New York Asian Film Festival

The New York Asian Film Festival is back. And it's five years old! Five years ago, the five of us in Subway Cinema had no film festival experience, no money, no connections - nothing but an intense love for Asian films and a large amount of stupidity that made us think we could put together a film festival focusing on the best contemporary Asian movies.

Five years later we still have no money, we still have no connections, and we're still stupid. But somehow we've premiered movies from Suzuki Seijun, Park Chan-Wook, Takashi Miike, Zhang Yimou, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Johnnie To and many many more. Is it dumb luck? Black magic? Secret super science? No one knows, least of all us.

This year's New York Asian Film Festival will take place from June 16 - July 1 at the Anthology Film Archives and the ImaginAsian theater.

It's been a tough year for films and we're still finalizing our line-up, but allow us to introduce you to a few of our confirmed titles:

FUNKY FOREST: FIRST CONTACT (Japan, 2005) - the follow-up film from the director and cast of THE TASTE OF TEA, last year's Audience Award Winner. A sci fi film starring Tadanobu Asano, a fat white kid, space amoeba's with long nose-hairs, armpit fleshapods, and the constant demand to "Show me your dancing!"

LINDA LINDA LINDA (Japan, 2005) - Korean actress Bae Doo-Na (SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE) plays a Korean high school exchange student who joins a power punk, all-girl band intent on shredding the school talent show. A tribute to the gawkiness and the glory that are being a teenager, plus a soundtrack that worms its way into your brain and refuses to leave.

CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL (Japan, 2005) - based on the best-selling manga, this is the other Japanese high school movie in our line-up. Come watch the saga of filthy, lousy Cromartie High, a school so sucky that they even enroll gorillas, robots, and Freddie Mercury. Only an invasion of space monkeys can bring this warring student body together.

PEACOCK (China, 2005) - Gu Chang-wei is China's premiere cinematographer having worked on the greatest films of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige before working for Robert Altman. His directorial debut is a poetic film about small town life in China during the 1970's but before you dismiss it as just another Chinese artfilm watch it. Totally unexpected, absolutely glorious, and downright thrilling it's no surprise that it won the Grand Jury prize at Berlin last year.

The full line-up will be announced during the last week of April.