CAAM spotlight shines bright on film fest
The Center for Asian American Media unfurls CAAMFest 2024 Thursday, May 9, through May 19, in San Francisco and Oakland. This year’s celebration of Asian voices locally and internationally features a collaboration between chefs Tracy Goh and Emily Lim at Goh’s restaurant Damansara on Tuesday, May 14; a live performance by musician Thao Nguyen at Yerba Buena Gardens on Saturday, May 18; and a two-day Filmmaker Summit on Friday and Saturday, May 10-11.
But CAAMFest’s biggest spotlight is on the films, from as close by as our own backyard and as far away as Myanmar, each in its own way reflecting the festival’s 2024 theme, “Lifting the Truths of Our Stories.” These eight titles are among the most intriguing of the festival’s offerings.
‘Admissions Granted’
CAAMFest 2024 gets off to a provocative start with Hao Wu and Miao Wang’s documentary. In a film that blends interviews, cinema verité and archival materials, the film depicts the ongoing debate over affirmative action and the complexity of the issue as the landmark case challenging race-based college admissions, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, wends its way to the Supreme Court.
6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 9. $25-$30 movie only; $80-$90 with gala admission; $70-$75 gala only. Palace of Fine Arts. 3601 Lyon St., S.F. The gala follows the screening and takes place at the Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., S.F.
CAAMFest 2024: Thursday, May 9-May 19. $13-$90. Various San Francisco and Oakland locations. www.caamfest.com/2024
‘Above and Below the Ground’
A dam in rural Myanmar that threatens a sacred river and the Indigenous people who make the area their home spur a burgeoning environmental movement in which Indigenous activists and Blast, a punk band composed of pastors, unite their voices to protect the waterway from rapacious corporate interests.
11 a.m. Saturday, May 11. $13-$15. Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F.
‘Q’
Lebanese American filmmaker Jude Chehab turns her camera on her family to make a striking documentary feature debut that probes her mother’s fealty to an all-female religious order in Lebanon and how her and her own mother’s involvement with it has impacted her family.
2:20 p.m. Saturday, May 11. $18-$20. Phyllis Wattis Theater at SFMOMA, 151 Third St., S.F.
‘A Great Divide’
When a Korean American family from the Bay Area relocates to rural Wyoming, the culture shock is made far worse by their new community’s racism. In a rare dramatic role, Ken Jeong is Isaac, the father who tries to get along, in contrast to his wife, Jenna (Jae Suh Park), who is not having it. Fifteen-year-old son Ben (Emerson Min) copes with not just a small town’s small, hateful minds but his feelings for best friend Ellie (Miya Cech).
6:30 p.m. Sunday, May 12. $13-$15. Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson St., S.F.
‘Smoking Tigers’
Ji-Young Yoo won the best performance prize in a U.S. narrative feature at the Tribeca Film Festival for her nuanced performance as a Korean American teenager coping with her parents’ separation in early 2000s Los Angeles. Her situation grows more complicated when she tries to fit in with her rich classmates at a college-prep summer school.
2 p.m. May 18. $13-$15. Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F.
‘Girls Will Be Girls’
The winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s world cinema dramatic audience award, writer/director Shuchi Talati’s feature debut is an evocative coming-of-age drama. Mira is the first female head prefect at her Himalayan boarding school, a role the studious girl takes seriously, only to see her status begin to unravel under pressure from the school’s ingrained misogyny and her own sexual awakening as she becomes involved with super-smooth new student Sri.
2:35 p.m. May 18. $18-$20. Phyllis Wattis Theater at SFMOMA, 151 Third St., S.F.
‘And So It Begins’
Filipina American filmmaker Ramona S. Diaz follows up her Emmy-winning 2020 documentary, “A Thousand Cuts,” with this sequel that focuses on the politics and pageantry of the 2022 contest for presidency of the Philippines between Vice President Leni Robredo and Bongbong Marcos, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
6:30 p.m. May 18. $18-$20. Phyllis Wattis Theater at SFMOMA, 151 Third St., S.F.
‘Owl’
Oakland director Julian Pham sets this feature in the East Bay city as a young woman returns to her hometown to help her sick father, only to discover it is not just his health that is precarious — his medical bills mount while he remains unable to work at his locksmith business. She takes over his business but still struggles — then a dubious opportunity presents itself. 6:30 p.m. May 19. $13-$15. New Parkway Theater, 474 24th St., Oakland.