CAAMFest opens May 10 at the Castro.
Masashi Niwano, festival and exhibitions director at the Center for Asian American Media, can imagine two former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, walking the red carpet at the Castro Theatre when CAAMFest 2018 gets under way on May 10.
Though perhaps unlikely to happen, it is a vision rooted in the unique place that Norman Mineta, subject of Dianne Fukami’s opening-night film, “An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy,” holds as a former San Jose mayor, longtime Democratic congressman and Cabinet secretary for both presidents. Mineta will attend the screening, where he will receive an honorary award from the city of San Francisco in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Asian Pacific Heritage Month.
“What the film does really well is it talks about his journey from being interned in World War II, and taking that and using that inspiration to get into the civic world and community leadership,” Niwano says.
Traditionally a winter film festival, CAAMFest, May 10-24, moves to spring to align itself with Asian Pacific Heritage Month. For this first season in its new slot, the festival is highlighting local talent and stories. San Francisco playwright and performer Brenda Wong Aoki; her husband, musician Mark Izu; and koto maestro Shoko Hikage end the festival with a performance at Herbst Theatre of “Aunt Lily’s Flower Book: One Hundred Years of Legalized Racism.”
The regional spotlight extends to one of two centerpiece films, “Bitter Melon,” continuing H.P. Mendoza’s long relationship with CAAMFest. Long-festering issues of abandonment and domestic violence come to a boil during a holiday family reunion in the Mission District filmmaker’s dark comedy.
“The film takes topics that we talk about in our communities, but it does it in a way that is more thoughtful, that is more complex when we’re talking about domestic violence, when we’re talking about immigrant families and their questioning of authority,” Niwano says. “There’s a lot of honesty in ‘Bitter Melon’ that I appreciate.”
CAAMFest’s other centerpiece, “Origin Story,” a documentary by Los Angeles-based Laotian American Kulap Vilaysack, similarly deals with family issues as the filmmaker embarks on a quest to meet her birth father.
Early-bird tickets for these films are now on sale. The full schedule will be announced on Tuesday, April 10. www.caamedia.org
Celebrating mentors: As a sophomore in high school, Victor Rios had a featured role in a 1994 “Frontline” documentary “School Colors.” The Oakland youth was walking himself back from the precipice of gang life, crime and homelessness.
He’s now a professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara and an author. And in Emmy-nominated filmmaker Katie Galloway’s documentary “The Pushouts,” that will be shown at the SFFILM Festival, he mentors Watts youth as he was once mentored himself.
Galloway knew nothing about the Watts angle the day she coldcalled Rios.
“My former mentor, Martin Flores, who I literally haven’t heard from in 15 years, just called me up and said, ‘Hey, fancy professor, I need you to come pay it forward,’ ” Rios told her. “There’s no way I can’t do that and it’s an offer I can’t refuse, so I’m going.”
“The Pushouts” will have a free community screening Tuesday, April 10, at San Francisco’s Victoria Theater. The festival also will screen it for students at Berkeley High School in honor of Rio’s other mentor, teacher Flora Russ.
“To me, ‘The Pushouts’ is, in part, a love letter to teachers,” says Galloway. “I feel like teachers don’t always even know how they impact their kids.” www.sffilm.org
Film clips
“Anote’s Ark,” Matthieu Rytz’s climate-change documentary, set in the Pacific nation of Kiribati, and Sam Bathrick’s “16 Bars,” about a prison rehabilitation-through-songwriting program, will be May 3-6 Doclands’ opening-and closing-night films, the California Film Institute has announced. www.doclands.com
Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) is developing “Tiger Woods,” Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian’s new biography about the golfer (and former Stanford student), into a docuseries.
The Arab Film Festival, Oct. 12-20, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, is accepting submissions through June 4. https://arabfilminstitute.org
The early-bird deadline for submitting to the Santa Cruz Film Festival, Oct. 3-7, is April 16. Regular deadline is May 18 with an extended deadline of June 15. www.santacruzfilmfestival.org/ submit