ASIA film festival promotes dialogue and Ramen

by Lawrence Sumulong

Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese’s thriller The Departed will probably be received as his personal cinematic creation. But what the public likely doesn’t know is that Scorsese’s film is based on a Hong Kong film entitled Infernal Affairs. Last month, Sept. 25-29, student group Asian Students in Alliance (ASIA) staged a film festival to highlight Internal Affairs and other films from Asian countries. With the festival, the group hoped to celebrate the cultural nuances of Asian countries, as well as to feature original Asian cinematic gems instead of their Hollywood knock-offs.

“ASIA as a cabinet and [its members] felt that the main stereotype for Asians [is that] there is no separation between Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Chinese, etc. We’re all viewed as one,” said event coordinator and ASIA cabinet member Diana Phung-Vuong ’07. “The main reason for doing the film festival is to show people on campus [that] ASIA, as a group, consists of very different cultures.”

The festival presented five foreign films, selected by the votes of ASIA’s members. The films were shown over the course of five days with each night representing a different country: Korea, China, Japan, India and America. According to Phung-Vuong, the festival shied away from a cohesive theme to simply present the diversity of genres and perspectives within the different countries. “Most of the movies that we chose were foreign made and we tried to stay away from any Americanized movies,” he said. “We wanted to show, ‘Well, this is another aspect, this is another culture that you really don’t see by just looking at the students here’.”

Each viewing featured snacks specific to the night’s highlighted country. The reason was to impart, along with the film’s content, a sense of each country's culture. “It exposes Asian culture in little things,” said Phung-Vuong. For example, when the Korean romantic comedy 100 Days with Mr. Arrogant was shown, the audience was given Korean Kim Chi Ramen noodles.

The festival’s organizers were slightly concerned that the films would perpetuate stereotypes of Asian countries. “[ASIA and its members] were worried [the films] would give off those stereotypes and people would stay with them,” said Phung-Vuong, “but as long as it creates a dialogue, that’s something that’s good.”