Karin Anna Cheung expresses her inner slut as Angela Yang with one of her many beaus in queer filmmaker Quentin Lee's “People I’ve Slept With.”

March is special to me.  It means 11 days of delicious Asian American and Asian cinema, and this year is no exception.  The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) gets going Thursday, March 11 and runs until March 21 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.  There is no other festival quite like it anywhere in the world, and I have been to a hell of a lot of film festivals.

This year’s SFIAAFF is dedicated to filmmaker and educator Loni Ding, who tirelessly pushed the envelope and made things happen.  She trained and inspired a generation of filmmakers and activists at UC, Berkeley. Ding was also the mover and shaker who helped created the Center for Asian American Media, the presenter of SFIAAFF. On Sunday, March 14 about 3:30pm, a brass marching band will lead a procession in Chinatown and North Beach, and folks will be out celebrating her life and commitment to creating art and social justice.

Ding’s brass band is one band that is going to keep marching on just as Ding is going to be with all of us. In fact, The Center for Asian American Media has just established the Loni Ding Award in Social Issue Documentary, which will be awarded.  Selection criteria includes excellence in filmmaking, and films that bring new voices to audiences or that illuminate underrepresented communities, including LGBT folks.

I would always run into Loni at the SFIAAFF.  She would have probably gotten a kick out of opening night film Today’s Special, written by and starring The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi.  Mandvi is pretty darn good, but the Bollywood actor Naseerrudin Shah steals the show. Shah plays New York cab driver Akbar, who was once a chef for Indira Ghandi, and his screen presence and magical recipes rival anything Meryl Streep’s Julia Childs cooked up. 

There are some queer highlights this year, including a retrospective of the courageous brave Filipino gay filmmaker Lino Broka and two ambitious features that reflect the diversity of independent filmmaking today: Quentin Lee’s The People I’ve Slept With (3/14, Castro; 3/16. PFA; 3/20, San Jose) and Hold the Sun (3/14, 3/15, VIZ Cinema, S.F.) by two local artists, Laura Zaylea and David Yun. 

Gay director Quentin Lee has made a delightfully bent romp of a romantic comedy that aspires to do some real box office.  And it just might. Lead actress Karin Anna Cheung is obviously having fun playing Angela.  And no wonder - when was the last time we had a woman who embraces her inner slut?  Angela regularly scores and has diverse tastes; she does it with everyone Asian, Caucasian, Latino and Black - men and women. The actress should take advantage of the role and start throwing How To Hook Up seminars. She even snaps post-coital pictures of her lovers. Audience members will particularly appreciate the stats she provides on the men in her life, which she dutifully shares with her gay best friend, Gabriel.  But almost everything changes when morning sickness arrives and Angela decides to figure out who daddy is.

Just as The People I’ve Slept With charts new queer romantic comedy territory, Hold the Sun goes where too few filmmakers these days dare to go.

The directors fearlessly tackle the everyday ho-hum. If you like fast cutting actions flicks, this pic isn’t for you. Instead, the film holds you and allows you to feel the way the light changes, and how body language and daily rituals really look.  The queer women who populate the film are sexually queer and queer in their everyday lives.  Shot locally, you have a taxidermist who lovingly preserves animal remains; a travel writer who never leaves her apartment and reads her texts aloud as she looks at cut-out photos of the exotic, an isolated artist who painstakingly does paint-by-number masterpieces which she attempts to sell on eBay, and a performance artist dressed like a Fox who challenges passers-by to notice and see their surroundings and her alluring body sculpture poses. The Q & A will be interesting, and if you are out and about at the festival, cruising for queer artist-types and have some patience, this is your ticket.

Going to see Hold the Sun will be an adventure, and part of this journey will be the discovery of a intimate new gem of a theater in San Francisco. Lets thank SFIAFF for introducing us to this new hot spot at New People (1746 Post Street). I must have missed it, but it opened last year and offers the latest films, art, fashion and retail enticements from Japan.  The VIZ Cinema’s normal programming focuses on some of the latest films from Japan, as well as an incredible legacy of classics, favorites, documentaries and anime.

And now Lino Brocka, although I am far from an expert on Filipino cinema. I know that Brocka is one of the greatest.  Just as Loni Ding inspired countless social issue American filmmakers, Brocka made his mark on Filipino directors. He made over 50 films; most were compelling dramas that took on social issues in Filipino society. He often would push daytime shoots into the night so he could attend anti-Marcos rallies. Go to see at least one of these films - you are in for a real treat. There is Bayan Ko: My Own Country (3/18, PFA), Manila in the Claws of Neon (3/20, PFA), Insiang (3/13, Sundance Kabuki) and You Have Been Weighed and found Wanting (3/12, Sundance Kabuki).

In addition to these films at SFIAAFF, I highly recommend that you check out local gay filmmaker Leo Chiang’s new film shot in post-Katrina New Orleans, A Village Called Versailles (3/13, Sundance Kabuki; 3/16, VIZ San Francisco; 3/20, San Jose). Did you know about the Vietnamese community in New Orleans?  Well, check it out. We don’t get to celebrate social justice victories often enough, and in this fine documentary we do and meet some real-life heroes at the same time. 

Of course, the shorts programs are good places to spot new gay works by talented queer filmmakers.  The most discerning cineastes know that if they want to discover up and coming filmmakers at film festivals, they should check out the shorts programs. It is less likely that these shows will sell out, and they are always a big mix of challenging, fun, contemplative and social issue fare.  SFIAAFF has introduced audiences to the unknown Ang Lee, Wayne Wong, Miar Niar, M. Knight Shyamalan, Gurinder Chadha, Justin Lin and Deepa Mehta. This year, you too might find the next superstar LGBT director in the Take Me Anywhere, I Don’t Care and the Wandering, Wondering shorts programs. 

In the run up to the festival, I managed to see some other films that I would like to recommend.  For fun, you can’t miss the Bollywood film Love Aaj Kal (3/14, Castro), and From Iran, About Elly (3/15, Sundance, Kabuki; 3/20, PFA). And I am going to be rushing over to the long awaited new documentary by local filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem.  This will be the world premiere of her personal film, In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee (3/12, Landmark Clay; 3/13, PFA; 3/21, San Jose). Deann explores her own adoption, and this film along with Wo Ai Mommy (3/14, 3/17 Sundance Kabuki), will make us all think about international adoption like we never have before. 

I asked my filmmaking pal Emmy Scharlatt to check out some other SFIAAFF films. Here are her take on some other selects at this years Asian American Festival

Agrarian Utopia (3/12. 3/13, Sundance Kabuki; 3/17, PFA) is a luscious documentary shot in a rice field in Thailand. It is all about globalization. Director Uruphong Raksan, who grew up in the countryside, uses stop motion photography and a loosely written script to document the lives of two farming families and their plight. They work and live in a society that relies less on agriculture and more on industry. Real life is shown through the observance of nature: farmers foraging  for food, honeycomb dripping and mushroom hunting in the forest. 

City of Life and Death (3/17, Sundance Kabuki; 3/19, PFA) tells the relatively little known story of the massacre of Nanking. Filmed in black and white and superbly shot, the images are sometimes hard to watch. There are explicit scenes of death, mutilation and rape. Yet a remarkable ensemble cast, brings the film life by showing real threads of human interaction and hope. Beautiful scenes of love and loss give the film its core strength. This film is possibly a masterpiece.

Hana, Dul, Sed (3/12, Landmark Clay; 3/13, PFA; 3/21, San Jose) which translates to “the stars are whispering” is a documentary made by Austrian director Brigitte Weich. Weichs’ film focuses on four North Korean women who played for the Korean soccer team in early 2000, and their dedication to the team as well as to the government of North Korea. The film follows the lives of the four women from young soccer stars to their later lives as mothers and full time citizens, referent and idealistic, their lives  governed by politics. The audience is brought into the personal realm which looks at gender; asking the question: is gender something we “do” ( or undo) rather then something we are?  The film captures a world rarely seen, the daily life of North Korean society.

The film God is D_ad ( 3/13, 3/17, Sundance Kabuki) takes us on a road trip from Kansas to Chicago. The characters all have their various reasons for why they want to take the “trip.” Director Abraham Lim tries to create a narrative film, which contrasts the fantasy world of Korean comic book animation with live- action drama. It is a brave attempt and a striking portrait of youth coming of age.