Further dispatches from the Hawaii International Film Festival:
HIFF is renowned for its promotion of Asian-American films, as well as American indies with Asian content, and this year’s selection is quite exciting. Two films that have impressed me in particular, both of which have also getting (well deserved) mad awards and press on the festival circuit this year–Made in China and Children of Invention.
Made in China is not, as the title immediately suggests to many people, a profoundly depressing documentary about Chinese factory workers (!!!), but rather a hysterical American-produced comedy about an oddball American entrepreneur on the loose in Shanghai.
Following his lifelong dream to invent novelty products in the tradition of Groucho glasses and slinkees, Johnson (Jackson Kuhne) travels to the motherland of all knick-nack production: good ol’ Zhongguo. What ensues is an always entertaining, often sweet, incredibly original film and one of the most unique American indie comedies I’ve seen in a long time. I may be a teeny tiny bit biased, since this film is about an American (yep) who travels to China (ah-huh) to start a business (mm-hmmm) and encounters a bizarre, inexplicable, frustrating, but sometimes magical world (yeeesh) and I can identify with the story just a smidge, but this is genuine and funny story that also sheds great light on the perils and pitfalls, but also triumphs, of life in China.
The film definitely has the stamp of an American indie comedy, but doesn’t lose itself in superfluous quirkiness. The film has was a huge hit at SXSW this year, winning its Grand Jury prize, which is super exciting for the film and especially for first-time director Judi Krant.
On the other end of the American indie spectrum is Children of Invention, a moving film that shows the American neo-realism movement at its very best. Directed by Tze Chun, the film tells the story of Raymond and Tina, two Chinese-American children who have to fend for themselves when their single mom, Elaine (Cindy Cheung, fragile and startling as a woman who struggles to keep her family afloat) finds herself trapped in a dangerous marketing scam. The film is certainly socially conscious and a powerful immigrant story, but it also shows great heart and prowess as a cinematic work. I was deeply impressed by Tze Chun’s ability to coax such confident and honest performances out of Michael Chen and Crystal Chiu, the respectively twelve and eight-year-old actors who play Raymond and Tina. Children of Invention has had an amazing festival run this year, from Sundance to winning the Puma Emerging Filmmaker award here at HIFF
Children of Invention has definitely garnered comparisons to So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain, which was released earlier this year. While the content of the two films is somewhat similar (both present partially autobiographical accounts of Asian/Asian-American siblings abandoned and left to their own devices), I was more struck by the similarities of each film’s calm, graceful pacing and assured storytelling. This films beautifully embody not only the current American neo-realism movement, but also the sophistication and global awareness of today’s American indies.
Seeing MIC, Children of Invention, and even Treeless Mountain, and meeting the fantastic director, producers, and actors who worked to make these films so compelling, gives me enormous faith in the future of American indie cinema. The remarkable ingenuity of these films more than makes up for their minimal budgets and I find it fitting that both the films incorporate themes about invention and innovation. Just as MIC’s Johnson longs to be a novelty inventor and Children of Invention’s Raymond and Tina make and sell toys and inventions to finance their dreams, so do these filmmakers who, even when the odds are stacked against them, rely on great invention and improvisation to create great work.
This entry was written by , posted on October 22, 2009 at 6:41 pm, filed under Uncategorized, adventures, art, film, travel and tagged children of invention, hawaii international film festival, hiff, judi krant, made in china, treeless mountain, tze chun. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.