The Circuit

by Anthony D'Alessandro
In its 24 years, the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival has gone from programming 20 films in one weekend to 160 features, shorts and docs over the course of one week. 

This year's festival kicked off Thursday night with the opening night film "Ping Pong Playa" at the DGA Theater and will close on Thursday, May 8, at the Aratani/Japan America Theater with the Australian pic "The Home Song Stories" starring Joan Chen.

After Thursday night's screening of "Ping Pong Playa," the fest's co-director David Magdael spoke with The Circuit about the various strides that the fest has made since its launch in 1983.

First and foremost, in effort to be straight up about its marketing, this year's fest shed its former moniker as The Visual Communications (VC) Film Festival and rebranded itself as the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.  

In its early years, the fest programmed mostly Asian international pics and would screen mostly at UCLA or in Little Tokyo.  In the mid '90s, the fest's management sought to embrace the growing appetite for Asian American films and began to tinker with its traditional lineup.

"We live in a town that's very separate, and if we always screened our films in little Tokyo, the fest would always be a local film festival," explained Magdael, "It was important to make a presence by being in Hollywood."

As such, this year's screenings will take place at the DGA Theater and the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Hollywood as well as the Imaginasian Center, the Aratani/Japan America Theater and at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Little Tokyo.

While many fests like to have an edge by touting some sort of world or North American premiere, the LAAPFF has found success in working alongside other Asian American film fests throughout the country rather than out-programming them.

"We'll look at what films and filmmakers have worked for their audiences, how they obtained certain prints from Asia as well as support each other's festivals," says Magdael.

For example, Justin Lin's Bruce Lee mockumentary "Finishing the Game" was a popular draw at several Asian-Am fests and served as the opening title for the LAAPFF last year.  This year, the Japanese action pic "The Machine Girl" about a high school girl who avenges her brother's death with a retrofitted machine gun, screened Saturday night after playing the Hawaii International Film Festival two weeks ago.

Other events which occurred throughout this past weekend included a panel discussion with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Iris Yamashita ("Letters From Iwo Jima"); a sit-down with "Harold & Kumar" headliner John Cho and scribes Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Scholossberg; a discussion with cinematographer Matthew Libatique ("Iron Man" and "Requiem for a Dream"), as well as a seminar entitled "Media Messengers: Asian Pacific Americans and Our Political Voice" with filmmakers Eric Byler ("Tre") and Annabelle Park.

Photo by Wilki W. K. Tom/©2008 Custom House Photography

by Anthony D’Alessandro
When it comes to overnight success in Hollywood, there are some standard stories, i.e. waterboys morph into hit screenwriters while assistants turn into power execs.

But a production accountant who becomes the leading man in a feature comedy is a first.

Such is the case with Jimmy Tsai, the affable headliner and co-writer of the Asian-American comedy “Ping Pong Playa” which opened the 24th annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Thursday night at the DGA. 

Playing to a soldout theater, “Playa,” directed by Oscar-winning docu filmmaker Jessica Yu, generated plenty of guffaws, however, at the after-party festgoers were more smitten with the larger-than-life onscreen personality of Tsai.

Making his acting debut in “Playa,” Tsai plays C-dub, a brassy SoCal slacker who pursues a career in ping pong playing after his pro brother is wounded.

A longtime number cruncher for the “Playa’s” producer Cherry Sky Films which shepherded Yu’s 2004 doc “In the Realms of the Unreal” as well as Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” and “Finishing the Game,” Tsai was chosen by the helmer to play the comedy’s urban protag after she caught his Asian commercial parodies on the web.

Remarking on his hammy shorts, Yu exclaimed at the post screening Q&A, “Jimmy has the greatest muddled minority ‘Rushmore’ syndrome.  When we were working on the script, he had no idea that I was working under the assumption that he was going to star in the film.”

“Luckily, we hired a production accountant for the office,” exclaimed Tsai who prepped for his role like any method actor would: watching repeated viewings of “Karate Kid” in his trailer.

“Playa,” which screened at Toronto, was shot in 20 days for a cost that was on par “to the craft services budget of the other ping pong comedy that didn’t do so well last year,” according to producer Anne Clements.