Producer, arranger, keyboardist, songwriter, composer, electronic music pioneer, actor: Japan’s Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in late March this year after a long battle with cancer, was all of these things, together and/or separately.
It’s a volley! — Chinese American street volleyball documentary hits cable
By Jason Cruz Northwest Asian Weekly Ursula Liang’s “labor of love,” 9-Man, which documents the Chinese American sport of street volleyball has received critical acclaim. We first covered the documentary in December 2012. Since then, the film and its makers have traveled the country showing it at various festivals and receiving awards. The film was […]
“Man From Reno”
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Dave Boyle’s “Man From Reno” begins with a gray screen. Slowly, we see that the camera is aimed dead on at a car windshield in the rain, droplets snaking down. With the rain comes the fog, and through the fog comes a man, a car, another car, a sudden […]
Revisiting Taiwanese New Wave — Northwest Film Forum features retrospective of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Hou Hsiao-hsien, who’s been directing films since 1980, is considered one of the most prominent directors in the Taiwanese New Wave cinema movement. The Northwest Film Forum, in collaboration with the Grand Illusion Cinema, presents a retrospective of the director’s work. Northwest Film Forum programmer Courtney Sheehan took some […]
Respect!: Celebrating Seven Samurai’s 60th anniversary
By Ninette Cheng Northwest Asian Weekly On December 4, Seattle will be hosting a film screening of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai for its 60th anniversary.
Adding music to silence — “Japanese Girls at the Harbor” gets a soundtrack
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Seattle’s musical/performance art troupe Aono Jikken Ensemble brings its musical and performing expertise to
At the “Mekong Hotel”
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly “All characters appearing in this work are actual persons,” warns the fine print at the end of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film, “Mekong Hotel.” “Any resemblance to other real beings, living or dead, is not coincidental.” It’s an odd, wry turn on the traditional disclaimer at the end of dramatic […]
Love “In the Family”
By Andrew Hamlin NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY “In the Family,” Patrick Wang’s first feature film as writer and director, opens with a quiet scene of a family preparing for breakfast. The child in the family, Chip (played by child actor Sebastian Barnes), rushes from one place to another while chattering. He’s a charming little boy with […]
Not a film, but a triumph
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly “This Is Not a Film,” a documentary by co-directors Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, opens with a man seated at his breakfast table, preparing to eat. He takes a phone call, puts it on speaker phone, and seems to tense up in his shoulders, bending slightly to avoid looking […]
Cultural and generational clashes abound in powerful “My Reincarnation”
By Andrew Hamlin Northwest Asian Weekly Jennifer Fox’s documentary film “My Reincarnation” begins enigmatically, with bodies floating in a pool of water and unidentified images shimmering, as if viewed through water. We come to see that the water represents, among other things, separation between the father and the son, who form the core of the […]