SDAFF Report: Animated Visions, a Gala, and Awards Night

Preceding Golden Lotus was the informative and delightful Yellow Ox Mountain, the sort of fleeting treat you're lucky to find on PBS at three in-the-morning. It traces the intersecting paths of two expat Chinese artists, both children of the cultural revolution. Zhang Jian-Jun channels his work through environmental, organic conduits, while Zhang Hongtu, long an abstract artist, decides to challenge the omnipresent chairman of his childhood. His depictions of Mao as a breakfast cereal shill, a ferocious tiger, or simply an iconic silhouette infuse his later, Warhol-indebted art.

Up next was the festival's most anticipated shorts program, "Animation: The Illusion of Life." (SDAFF info page) In much-needed relief to the omnipresent-CGI entries was the dark and endearing Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot. The hand-drawn, noseless character's foot is of such ill repute it attracts pile-ups, plane crashes and other assorted bedevilments -- that is, until she learns to turn it around. Video, animation and drawing-montage Talking About Amy is director Yorico Murakami's look at her gender-bending friend, a performance artist. Also digging deep was Beautiful Eyes, director Will Kim's waves of watercolor washing through German Romantic standard "The Sandman."

Despite a few Pixar-lite plasticine misfires, many CGI entries stood out. While devoid of dialogue, Kung Fu Gecko was an Eastern tweak to the medium and it's autonomous animals. Scope was a microhouse-thumping mindtrip through a geometric aquarium; Oh Hisse similarly dazzled in it's kinetic celebration of form and movement; Musashino Plateau was a dazzling indictment of extrapolating Japanese construction and infill; and the fleeting, forlorn Glimmer, wedded wide-eyed character animation with a sumptuous, deep darkness.

Another standout, the biomech meditation Mirage was honored later that night at SDAFF's Gala Awards dinner. At times a self-congratulatory constellation of local celeb stargazing, at others an earnest celebration of talent both new and entrenched, it never failed to entertain. Just writing that your humble reporter entered the ballroom to a muzaked-reimagining of "In The Club," and won a silent auction of Extreme Asia DVDs (note to Tartan: box pull-quotes from DreadCentral.com don't exactly assuage prospective renters), the excitement can't be conveyed.

Onstage was the incredibly-monikered Harlem Lee, late of the most recent incarnation of Fame as some American Idol-type entity (I think). Post his heartstring-snapping rendition of "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" came the awards presentation. Taking home experimental honors was Latent Sorrow, wherein bold, black swaths reminiscent of Russian expressionism coalesced around shapes and faces. Director Matthew Swanson couldn't attend to pick up his dramatic narrative short award for Hiro, so he submitted a cubist collage of his talking head, filmed with his phone's camera, to thank the foundation.

Feature documentary accolades went to Nagasaki and nuclear arms doc The Last Atomic Bomb, burnout-ode Colma: The Musical won special jury honors, and magic-imbued Eve & The Fire Horse won best narrative feature. Director Julia Kwan, enamored of presenter Dustin Nguyen, gushed that she was from Vancouver, "where 21 Jump Street was filmed." Other presenters on hand included Battlestar Galactica's ravishing Grace Park (pictured at top), Anapolis muscles Roger Fan, and Lost's Daniel Dae Kim. He and festival founder Lee Ann Kim bestowed the grand jury award on opening night-flick Journey From The Fall. Director Ham Tran is SDAFF's prodigal son, having won two years ago for his dramatic short The Anniversary.

Journey From The Fall's convocation as festival favorite was cinched with a lifetime achievement award for Kieu Chinh, the film's doting grandmother. The radiant Ming Na made the presentation, fittingly as she's played her daughter in both The Joy Luck Club and on E.R. A kismet serendipity surrounds Chinh's latest performance, as like her character, she too was a Vietnamese refugee; clips of other performances, notably from M*A*S*H, opposite Alan Alda, whirred past as she took the podium. "It is beautiful that motion pictures and art are an international language," she effervesced. "There are no boundaries."

LINKS

Golden Lotus: Legacy of Bound Feet - SDAFF info page

Yellow Ox Mountain - Official Site

Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot - Official Site

Kung Fu Gecko - Official Site

Oh Hisse - Streaming Video

Glimmer - Animator Donald Phan's Site

Latent Sorrow - Direcor Shon Kim's Site

Mirage - Interview with Animator Youngwoong Jang

Hiro - Official Site

Report by Wells Dunbar