8 Asians

My friend tipped me off about this upcoming (very short) Asian/Asian American film festival, Subtitle Film Festival, coming up later this week.

According to the Subtitle Media website,

The 1st Annual Subtitle Film Festival presented by Wells Fargo will showcase 9 cutting edge feature films from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. The festival will span from April 12-15, 2007 and will be hosted at the recently opened MPARK4 theatres in Koreatown, Los Angeles.

The films are as follows:

• 4:30 directed by Royston Tan (Singapore) Los Angeles Premiere
• After This Our Exile directed by Patrick Tam (Hong Kong / Taiwan) US Premiere
• Confession of Pain directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak (Hong Kong) North American Premiere
• Dorm directed by Songyos Sugmakanan (Thailand) Los Angeles Premiere
• Hanging Garden directed by Toshiaki Toyoda (Japan)
• Isabella directed by Pang Ho-cheung (Hong Kong)
• Memories of Tomorrow directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi (Japan)
• Sundays in August directed by Lee Jin-woo (Korea) North American Premiere
• Sway directed by Miwa Nishikawa (Japan) Los Angeles Premiere

Advance ticket prices are $8 online at www.subtitlemedia.org or $10 the day of the screening at the MPARK4 Theatres box office.

The Subtitle Film Festival is produced by Subtitle Media—a non-profit organization dedicated to raising the awareness of Asian and Asian American achievements in the arts.

So I have a bunch of questions I’m totally putting out there because I couldn’t (easily) find the answers:

• Who are the folks behind Subtitle Media? How did they program this film fest? (It seems to me that the films are primarily Asian films, not Asian American, so I’m just wondering how they gathered these film selections)
• It looks like MPARK4 is a Korean theatre. Has anyone been? I heard this place opened pretty recently. The website is in Korean, so I don’t know what to make of the theatre. But something about seeing the 300 one sheet in Korean amuses me greatly. The MPARK4 Theatres are located at: 3240 Wilshire Blvd. 3rd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90010 (Cross Street is New Hampshire).
• Why program an Asian/Asian American film festival so close to the well-known Visual Communications Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (VC Filmfest)? (I’m not saying VC’s the only game in town… again, I’m just wondering what all this is about.)

I’d love to hear from the folks at Subtitle Media to find out more about this organization and their film festival. I may even have to make my way over to the MPARK4 and check it out.