CAAMFest 2014

3/14/14 to 3/21/14

Each year, the Center for Asian American Media brings us the best in contemporary cinema from Asia and the Asian diaspora. This year's edition of CAAMFest at BAM/PFA feature films and documentaries from Singapore, Japan, India, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, the United States, and more.

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  • Past
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Past Films

  • Farah Goes Bang

    Friday, March 14 7pm
    Meera Menon (U.S., 2013). Farah Mahtab's sex life is a litany of awkward encounters, and this twentysomething is eager to shake the unwanted moniker of “virgin.” Will a cross-country roadtrip with her best friends to stump for presidential nominee John Kerry provide the sweet release she craves? A raunchy, feminist reexamination of the road trip genre. (93 mins)
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  • Pee Mak

    Friday, March 14 9:15pm
    Banjong Pisanthanakun (Thailand, 2013). Ace physical comedy and bone-chilling scares collide in Shutter co-director Banjong Pisanthanakun's hilarious send-up of one of Thailand's most enduring and widely filmed ghost stories, the story of Mae Nak Phra Khanong. Pee Mak decimated Thailand's domestic box office in 2013 to become the country's biggest draw ever. (115 mins)
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  • Lordville

    Saturday, March 15 4:45pm
    Rea Tajiri (U.S., 2013). Asking what it means to own land, the acclaimed director of History and Memory (SFIAAFF '91) harnesses unusual stories buried within the everyday-powerful floods, ancestral secrets, and colonial violence-to expose traces of a town's history. Her cinematic probing compels us to ponder our relationship to place. (65 mins)
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  • Ilo Ilo

    Saturday, March 15 6:30pm
    Anthony Chen (Singapore, 2013). Winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes, this riveting quasi-autobiographical first feature is against the backdrop of the 1990s Asian financial crisis. The film slowly reveals a family on the brink, watching desperately as self-control slips from their grip.(99 mins)
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  • Innocent Blood

    Saturday, March 15 8:30pm
    D. J. Holloway, Sun Kim (U.S., 2013). In this taut and impeccably filmed thriller set against the backdrop of L.A.'s Koreatown, James Park (Jun-seong Kim) navigates the city's dark and gritty underbelly to find his abducted son A bold morality play where deception, control, and revenge reign supreme. (100 mins)
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  • The Great Passage

    Sunday, March 16 3:30pm
    Yuya Ishii (Japan, 2013). Majime can barely muster the confidence to speak, but when he's recruited to work on an ambitious new dictionary, his life finally begins to bloom. In Japan's quirky 2013 Oscar submission, the dictionary forms the backbone not only of human communication, but for any number of life's most powerful transitions. (133)
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  • The Sun Behind the Clouds

    Sunday, March 16 6:10pm
    Ritu Sarin, Tenzing Sonam (India/U.K., 2009). Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam in person. 2008 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the takeover of Tibet, prompting uprisings and the biggest upheaval in decades in Lhasa and other cities. This documentary chronicles the Tibetan struggle for freedom. Screening in our Committed Cinema series. (79 mins)
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  • The Way We Dance

    Sunday, March 16 8:15pm
    Adam Wong (Hong Kong, 2013). When a tofu shop worker joins her college's hip-hop dance team, she becomes a rising star. But her star is in danger of falling when her fellow team members, a rival dance team, and romance all get in the way. (110 mins)
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  • Bringing Tibet Home

    Wednesday, March 19 7pm
    Tenzin Tsetan Choklay (U.S./Nepal/India/South Korea, 2013). Artist Tenzing Rigdol navigates various international borders to bring more than twenty tons of Tibetan soil to Dharamshala, India, to satisfy his father's dying wish to set foot in Tibet one last time before he passed away. An insightful and extremely touching film about the contemporary Tibetan psyche. (82 mins)
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  • Karaoke Girl

    Wednesday, March 19 9pm
    Visra Vichit-Vadakan (Thailand, 2012). A compassionate look at the life of a karaoke girl in Bangkok, where poverty, gender, and desires tangle to create intractable situations that leave the heroine suffering, yet sometimes hopeful. Part documentary, part fictionalized narrative, this film is sure to touch your heart. (77 mins)
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  • Jazz in Love

    Friday, March 21 7pm
    Baby Ruth Villarama (Philippines, 2013). Jazz and his German fiancé Theo struggle against culture, family, and tradition as well as the thousands of miles that lie between them. The film follows Theo's visit to the Philippines to ask for Jazz's hand in marriage from reluctant in-laws-but can their relationship survive their differences? (75 mins)
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  • Jadoo

    Friday, March 21 8:45pm
    Amit Gupta (U.K., 2013). In this lighthearted family story, Shalini returns home to Leicester to announce her engagement. She wants the perfect Indian wedding, and for her uncle and father-both chefs-to create the menu for it. But it has been two decades since they have spoken to one another. Will Shalini's wedding bring the family together again? (84 mins)
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  • The Missing Picture

    Tuesday, March 17 7 PM
    Rithy Panh (Cambodia/France, 2013). Winner of the 2013 Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, this latest film from renowned director Rithy Panh is a testament to the special place of cinema in giving form to phantom pains caused by unthinkable trauma. Clay figures, archival footage, and spoken words weave a stunningly vivid picture of the filmmaker's and Cambodia's past. (90 mins)
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