Artist in Person Co-sponsored by NAATA. Some Divine Wind will screen again, in San Francisco, as part of the Asian American International Film Showcase on Saturday, April 14 (415-863-0814). "I heard everything, you heard nothing"-this message left on an answering machine encapsulates Roddy Bogawa's concern with the difficulty of communication, between individuals, cultures, genders in this, his first feature film. Some Divine Wind is ostensibly the story of the relationship between a Japanese-American, Ben, and his Caucasian girlfriend, Helen. However, the narrative is submerged and splintered admidst a collage of disparate material, some created, some collected. The individual moments of their interactions are intercut with personal and cultural memories, which gives context to their difficulties. Helen's current fascination with Japanese culture is contrasted with racist characterizations of Japanese by Americans during World War II, which are in turn contrasted with Japanese-made war propaganda cartoons-incompatible, opposing views. But such dichotomies cannot remain separate in Ben, the son of a Japanese mother whose family was killed, unbeknownst to her, by bombs dropped by his American father during World War II. While the price of the parent's union was the suppression of the father's action, Ben's knowledge of it some twenty years later culminates in a crisis of identity-a crisis reflected in the film's shattered form. Nonetheless, Bogawa suggests the possibility of shifting one's point of view, of breaking out of polar constructions of the world, for he also tells of a Japanese printmaker who devoted a lifetime to depicting different views of Mt. Fuji. -Kathy Geritz